BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 



FOR THE 



MESSAGE OF THE NEW 



AN EFFORT TO CONNECT MORE CLOSELY THE TESTAMENTS; 

TO WHICH IS ADDED A SERIES OF PAPERS ON 

VARIOUS OLD TESTAMENT BOOKS 

AND SUBJECTS 



BV 

anson bartie Curtis, b.d., ph.d. 

Instructor in Hebrew in Tufts College Divinity School 



"ftlAY** 1894*) 



BOSTON 

universalist publishing house 

30 West Street 



^ 

Q* 



i> 



Copyright, 1894, 

BY 

Univkrsalist Publishing House, 



TYPOGRAPHY BY C J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON. 
PRINTED BY F. H. GILSON CO. 



TO 

THE PARENTS OF MY WIFE, 

AND TO 

MY OWN FATHER AND MOTHER, 

WHOSE UNTIRING TOILS WERE MY^ 
OPPORTUNITIES, 

E ffldrtcate tfjis 3Soofe 

IN MEMORY OF PLEASANT SUMMERS IN 
MICHIGAN. 



" For out of the oldfieldes, as men saithe, 
Cometh all this new cor ne fro to yere to yere. 
And out of old doo&es, in good fait he, 
Cometh al this new science that men lere, 
But now to purpose, as of this mattere, 
To rede forth it gan me so delite, 
That all the day me thought it but a lite." 

Chaucer. 



PREFACE. 



"The obstinate insisting that tweedledum is not 
tweedledee is the bone and marrow of life. . . . The 
process of history consists in certain folks becoming 
possessed of the mania that certain special things are 
important infinitely, whilst other folks cannot agree in 
the belief." So Prof. W. James has written. And 
the statement may be taken as an apology for any lack 
of originality that may be discovered in these chapters. 
If they contain anything new, it is the emphasis. 
And the excuse for the book is the obvious fact that 
some things have to be said again and again, in various 
styles and with different spirit, before their full lesson 
is finally learned. 

Some of the following chapters were originally pub- 
lished in religious papers and magazines, and others 
have been given as addresses ; but one purpose runs 
through the whole, which is also still further illustrated 
by the rambles in Old Testament Books and Subjects 
with which the volume closes. 

The method of study here adopted, it is hoped, will 
serve a double purpose. It brings to each Testament 

5 



6 PREFACE, 

the support of the other for all in it that is of positive 
and permanent value ; and it helps to eliminate from 
each Testament its transient and temporal teachings by 
offering the other as its corrective and supplement. 
The New Testament religion is a reaction against a 
dogmatic apprehension of the Old. We ought not, 
therefore, to expect perfect completeness and poise in 
either Testament. This can only come from the union 
of the two. Each, in fact, corrects, supplements, and 
illustrates the other. 

The reason the God of the Hebrews is in this work 
called Jahveh is the simple fact that Jehovah is not a 
word and means nothing. As a further help to the 
reader I may say that, in the references to the Bible, 
parts of verses are often indicated by the letters a y b> c, 
immediately following the verse figure. The letter a 
indicates the first part of the verse, b the second part, 
and so on. 

My authorities have been, so far as practicable, in- 
dicated in the footnotes. 

A. B. C. 

Tufts College, Mass., Feb. 17, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction. 

i. Our attitude towards the unsolved problems. 2. Our attitude towards 
the critics. 3. Three stages in the life of the Bible student : illustration. 

Pages 15-21 

Chap. I. Back to the Old Testament. 

1. "Back to the Past:" Paul the first to raise the cry. 2. The common 
method reversed. 3. The relations of the Testaments. 4. The enduring 
character of Old Testament religion. 5. A revival of Old Testament study 
is already at hand, but it is limited. 6. The Old Testament needs no defence. 
7. The student should follow behind the critics. 8. The Old Testament reli- 
gion rests upon a series of divine revelations. 9. The Old Testament a book 
of examples; the New of precepts Pages 25-34 

Chap. II. Back to the Old Testament for its own sake. 

1. The religion of the civilized world is from the Jew. 2. What Israel 
did not do. 3. What Israel did do. The Bible deserves its place as a reli- 
gious classic. 4. Ignorance of the Bible inexcusable. 5. Internal obstacles 
to Bible study. 6. External obstacles. 7. Historical obstacles. 8. These 
overcome. The value of technical Bible study. 9. Literary masterpieces in 
the Bible. 10. The greatness of the Bible. 11. The value of the Bible to 
the Christian believer Pages 37-48 

Chap. III. Back to the Old Testament for the Doctrine 
of Inspiration. 

1. A pair of pictures. 2. The doctrine of inspiration the result of the 
primitive socialism. 3. The teaching of the Old Testament concerning in- 
spiration. 4. Growing accuracy in details as minds and morals develop. 

5. The Old Testament writers do not claim infallibility: growth of ideas. 

6. The New Testament supports the Old. 7. The evils of erroneous ideas of 
inspiration and revelation. 8. It is expedient that the old view be given up : 
new meanings for old words. 9. The proof of inspiration. 10. Influence of 
the doctrine of inspiration : it contains implicit the doctrine of the immanent 
God Pages 51-57 

7 



CONTENTS. 



Chap. IV. Back to the Old Testament for a Valid Proof 
of God's Existence. 

i. Relations of the proofs of God to God in history. 2. Apologetic value 
of the growing consciousness of God in the Old Testament, 3. Origin of 
the Jahveh cult. 4. Moses as leader and organizer of his people. 5. Moses 
as judge and prophet. 6. As lawgiver and religious teacher. 7. The theology 
of the Song of Deborah. 8. Jahveh at first a tribal or national God. 9. Jahveh 
and the calves of Bethel and Dan. 10. Jahveh as the God of righteousness. 
11. Spiritual monotheism and practical atheism. 12. God a spirit, and man 
morally free. 13. Isaiah and "God in History." 14. Conclusion. 

Pages 79-95 

Chap. V. Back to the Old Testament for a New Concep- 
tion of the Messiah. 

1. Unnatural and natural Messianic prophecy. 2. The beginnings of the 
Messianic idea. 3. Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 4. Changes in the national hope. 
Isaiah and the exilian writers. 5. Haggai and Zechariah : Malachi and Joel. 
6. Daniel and the Apocrypha. 7. The Messiah a priest. 8. The Messiah 
a prophet. 9. Revival of the kingly Messiah of the early prophets. 10. The 
number of Messianic passages increased by scribal exegesis. 11. The com- 
bining of various ideas. 12. The Messiah a prophet and teacher, not an 
atoning sacrifice. 13. The New Testament fulfilment . . . Pages 99-122 

Chap. VI. Back to the Old Testament for the Way of 
Salvation. 

I. EARLY IDEAS OF SACRIFICE. 

i. Does the O. T. doctrine of sacrifice look forward to Christ? 2. Early 
sacrifices. 3. The Passover. 4. The sacrifice a feast. 5. Self -mutilation 
not atonement. 6. The sacrifice a gift to the gods. 7. The expiatory offer- 
ing. 8. The ransom Pages 125-129 

II. EARLY REACTIONS. 

9. The prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, decry the popular 
views of sacrifice. 10. Prophetic scheme of forgiveness and reconciliation. 
11. The reaction of the sages. 12. The reaction of the poets. 13. The 
Buddha's idea of sacrifice Pages 130-136 

III. THE PRIESTLY COUNTER REFORMATION. 

14. The priest-prophets. 15. The Levitical doctrine of the sacrifice. 
16. The sin of ignorance and its consequences. 17. The scapegoat and day 
of atonement Pages 136-141 



CONTENTS. 9 

IV. THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE. 

18. Paul's doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ. 19. The death of Christ 
abrogated, not fulfilled, the law. 20. Looseness in the N. T. ideas of Jesus' 
sacrificial death. 21. Paul's view really a return to prophetism. 22. Support 
of this view in early Christian literature. 23. Ballou its first advocate in this 
country Pages 142-150 

Chap. VII. Back to the Old Testament for the Suffering 
Christ. 

I. THE SOCIAL VIEW OF ATONEMENT ACCORDING TO SECOND ISAIAH. 

i. Human sacrifice in early Israel. 2. The atoning powers of the right- 
eous. 3. The mission of the righteous servant in Isaiah liii. 4. The servant 
as the nation or righteous portion of the nation. 5. The servant a guilt- 
offering for the world. 6. The ideas of " law " and of " sacrifice " spiritual- 
ized. 7. The servant's preparation for his work. 8. Second Isaiah's view of 
the unity of the race : a social view of atonement Pages 153-167 



II. SECOND ISAIAH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

9. The ideas of Messiah and suffering righteous are kept distinct : Jewish 
developments of the thought of Isaiah liii. 10. Ideas which tended towards 
a Messianic interpretation of the same. n. The quotations from Isaiah liii. 
in the New Testament, as a rule, disappointing. 12. Jesus' own view of his 
sufferings and death. 13. New Testament passages that clearly teach the 
social view of atonement Pages 1 68-1 81 

III. APPENDIX ON SECOND ISAIAH. 

i. The theory of the three Babylonian Isaiahs. 2. Chapter lii. 13 to 
liii. 12 a dialogue, notes on the section. 3. Isaiah liii. in the Targums. 

Pages 1 81-184 

Chap. VIII. Back to Both Testaments for their Recon- 
ciliation. 

1. The Christ as Messiah, as sacrifice, and as suffering servant. 2. Was 
Jesus the Christ ? 3. Different views of the relation of prophecy and fulfil- 
ment. 4. Prophecy must be studied in the light of its own age. 5. Signifi- 
cance of Jesus' adoption of the Jewish Messianic idea. 7. Jesus the true 
Messiah in the light of Jeremiah's promised " new covenant." 8. The recon- 
ciliation : true religion is found in either Testament . . . Pages 187-195 



IO CONTENTS, 



Chap. IX. Back to the Old Testament for its Sociology. 

i. The broader modern view of society. 2. Sociology defined. 3. The 
Scriptures have been too exclusively studied on the side of their theology. 
4. Sociological value of the Hebrew history. 5. Chronologically arranged 
the Bible is the best text-book on sociology. 6. An outline of Biblical 
sociology. 7. The family. 8. The nation. 9. Land. 10. Labor. 11. 
Rich and poor. 12. Education. 13. Religion : Biblical sociology is soci- 
ology with a soul Pages 199-213 

Chap. X. Some Ancient and Modern Estimates of the Old 
Testament. 

1. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church. 2. The Old Testament in 
the New. 3. The Old Testament in the early Church. 4. Estimates from 
classifications. 5 . The German Idealists, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, and Lotze. 

6. Newman Smyth and Professor Ely : Haeckel and the scientists : Dillman. 

7. The need of adapting our view of the Bible to the facts. 8. The Biblical 
authors were religious, not scientific, specialists Pages 217-229 

Chap. XI. Evolution and the Old Testament. 

1. Difficulties in the way of a definition of evolution. 2. Twofold mean- 
ing of the word " origin." 3. Evolution the manifestation of a consciousness 
eternally the same. 4. Lessing and the education of the human race. 5. Why 
not accept evolution as a method ? 6. Difficulties. 7. Robertson Smith and 
the evolution of Old Testament religion. 8. Edward Caird and the evolu- 
tion of the absolute religion Pages 233-247 

Chap. XII. Leisurely Rambles in the Old Testament with 
Some of its Friends and Admirers. 

I. PROFESSOR RYLE AND THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON. 

i. Mr. Ryle's point of view. 2. Significance of the threefold division. 
3. The formation of the canon a slow process. 4. The first canon completed 
by Ezra. 5. The second canon two hundred years later. 6. The third canon 
still open in the time of Christ Pages 251-258 

II. THE LIBERAL PREACHER AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 

1. Mistaken views. 2. Higher criticism defined. 3. Progress in 
mechanics and theology compared. 4. Heber Newton and Newman 
Smyth. 5. Criticism is not rationalism Pages 258-264 



CONTENTS. 1 1 



III. PROFESSOR TOY AND THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL. 

i. The uselessness of much of the older literature. 2. Professor Toy's 
religion of Israel. 3. The need of a bird's-eye view at the outset, Pages 264-266 

IV. W. ROBERTSON SMITH AND THE JEWISH BIBLE. 

i. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church. 2. Need of more scientific 
methods of Biblical study. 3. Textual errors. 4. Material at hand for 
textual criticism. 5. Early Hebrew written without vowels: Jahveh. 6. 
Hebrew history reconstructed Pages 266-271 

V. PROFESSOR DRIVER AND OLD TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION. 

1. The work itself. 2. The Book of Judges. 3. The Book of Deuter- 
onomy. 4. Isaiah. 5. Isaiah xiii., xiv. 6. Isaiah xv., xvi. 7. Isaiah xxiv- 
xxvii. 8. The effect of Driver's book as a whole .... Pages 27 1-27 7 

VI. THE MEN OF THE BIBLE. 

i. History from biography. 2. Jeremiah and Moses. 3. The biographical 
sermon Pages 277-280 

VII. PROFESSOR GENUNG AND THE BOOK OF JOB. 

1. The problem of the book. 2. The author's aim not to prove, but to 
show. 3. Job, not the Book of Job, solves the problem. 4. The date and in- 
tegrity of the book. 5. The character of the composition. 6. Genung's 
translation Pages 281-286 

VIII. RENAN : HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK. 

1. A sketch of the life of Renan. 2. The character of his work. 3. Read 
Renan ! Pages 286-292 

IX. PROFESSOR TOY'S JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

I. Professor Toy's position. 2. The theology of the Jews. 3. Sociology 
and religion. 4. The significance for religion of the great man. 5. Particu- 
lar and universal religions. 6. Professor Toy's method comprehensive. 

Pages 292-298 

X. CANON CHEYNE AND DEVOUT CRITICISM. 

i. The higher critic as a preacher of the gospel. 2. David in history and 
in tradition. 3. The Psalms do not lose in fervor by being placed after the 
exile Pages 298-302 



12 CONTENTS. 

XI. PROFESSOR DRIVER AS A PREACHER. 

i. Misapprehension of the methods of Driver and others. 2. The help- 
fulness and reasonableness of " Sermons on the Old Testament." 3. Perma- 
nent elements in the Old Testament Pages 302-306 

Chap. XIII. Hints for the Pulpit and Devotional Use 
of the Old Testament. 

1. The great preachers have been Old Testament students. 2. The need 
of a book of wise selections from the Old Testament : an expurgated Bible. 
3. That the Church has a right to make such a book of selections appears 
from the history of the formation of the canon. 4. A list of readings sug- 
gested for pulpit or devotional use Pages 309-314 

Chap. XIV. An Inexpensive Old Testament Library. 

1. Commentaries in general. 2. A list of the best English commentaries 
on the Old Testament. 3. Introductions to the Old Testament. 4. Theolo- 
gies. 5. Histories. 6. Expositions, running commentaries. 7. The late 
books and the inscriptions Pages 31 7-322 



INTRODUCTION. 



"How truly its central position is impregnable, religion has never adequately 
realized" 

Herbert Spencer. 

" It is by no means impossible that the world, tired out by the constant bank- 
ruptcy of liberalism, will once more become Jewish and Christian?* 

Ernest Renan. 



INTRODUCTION. 



i. This is an age in which we are encountering 
myriads of unsolved and perhaps insoluble questions. 
Some of these questions are vital and practical, others 
are ideal and theoretical. All alike are important. 
And so far as we can it is our duty to solve them. 

But when we have done our best, there will still re- 
main a large field of truth touching the very founda- 
tions of the intellectual, moral, and religious life that 
cannot be wholly explored. There will always be un- 
solved problems, there will always be unproven truths. 
What shall be our attitude towards these? Shall we 
treat them indifferently because they are unproved ? 
Shall we turn agnostic, and exalt our ignorance into 
a philosophy ? Shall we go to the other extreme, at- 
tempt the impossible, and labor to prove what God 
never intended should be proven by human reason? 
Evidently none of these questions implies the correct 
answer. The rather do we turn to the lines of Tenny- 
son, which John F. Genung has recently emphasized, — 

"For nothing worthy proving can be proven 
Nor yet disproven; wherefore, then, be wise, 
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 
And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith.' ' 

" This ever-present faith in faith," says Professor 

*5 



1 6 INTRODUCTION. 

Genung, "gives a marvellous uplift to all Tennyson's 
poetic work." It will give a marvellous uplift to the 
work of any man, no matter what his calling. It is 
faith, rather than the forms of faith, that is the 
important thing. 

What is this sunnier side of doubt in regard to Old 
Testament questions ? In the first place, the sunny 
side of doubt is never found in those who cling to old 
exploded notions. By this means a man may make 
himself the contemporary of his great-grandfathers,, 
but he can never thus become the teacher of his 
grandchildren. No, the sunnier side of doubt consists 
in searching out and emphasizing the old faith that 
lies hid in the new truths. For the race has hold 
of something real and eternal in its religious faith. 
That was a profound remark of Kant's in which he 
proclaimed that it is only the permanent that can suffer 
change. The fact, then, that religious faith can and 
does adapt itself to new conditions is a sign of its 
permanence. The sunnier side of doubt, therefore, is 
never timid, never rash, never sentimental, but full of 
love for the truth, and faith in the truth. 

2. The discussion presupposes throughout the gen- 
eral correctness of the views of Driver, Cheyne, Briggs, 
Robertson, Smith, and others. But at the same time 
our effort is not to establish those results, but to show 
in some detail how the Christian religion has gained in 
authority, in attractiveness, and in spirituality by an 
appeal to the New Bible. I have not added to the 
Decalogue, as a learned translator of Sophocles has 
recently suggested, this new commandment, "Thou 
shall not covet the German's knife, nor his readings, nor 



INTRODUCTION. I J 

his meters, nor his sense, nor his taste, nor anything 
that is his." But I have felt free to accept suggestions 
from the Germans, or from any other scholars, when 
they appealed to reason and common-sense. 

A word of warning may not be out of place for some 
readers. We remember the story of those who cast out 
devils but "walked not with us." And we remember 
also the advice of Gamaliel regarding the treatment of 
those not in perfect accord with the religious notions 
of the ruling authorities. History points us many 
lessons, and none with more emphasis than this, that 
it is the easiest thing in the world to mistake the sup- 
ports upon which our religion stands. This is appar- 
ently a part of our common human nature. She who 
suffers a great sorrow is sure, while the bitterness of 
her grief is upon her, that she can never be happy again ; 
yet time revives the springs of joy. He who suffers a 
great defeat is sure, in the moment of his chagrin, that 
he can never again lift up his head ; yet rest brings pur- 
pose and assurance once more to his relief. So when 
Jesus began to preach, the honest Jews said he violated 
the law and robbed religion of its authority. But Jesus' 
teachings have prevailed, and religion glows with more 
fervor than ever before. When it was found that the 
earth is really round, and revolves about the sun, the 
church said the Bible is in peril, and it threw itself in 
the face of the telescope and the geometer. Science 
prevailed, and a larger world was given to the God of 
the Bible, and a more intelligent church. There was 
quaking at the discovery of the sun spots, the circulation 
of the blood, the medical art, at the marvellous advances 
of geology, biology, and the recent evolutionary science. 



1 8 IN TROD UCTION. 

Yet, amidst all these, religion holds its own, and its 
central position becomes ever more impregnable. Let 
us be very careful, then, what we say about the modern 
critics, lest we be found fighting against God. Modern 
methods of reconstructing the Old Testament history 
and religion are, it is admitted, a kind of reasoning in 
a circle. And there are many lacunae in the circum- 
ference. Yet I believe that the circle is one beyond 
which no facts lie that possess the power to do other 
than make the circumference more regular and more 
complete, and its centre, which is the divine love, more 
resplendent and more life-giving. ^ 

3. The Bible student who goes on unto perfection is 
very liable to have to pass through three well marked 
stages. These may be well illustrated by an instance 
given, I think, by J. Clark Murray in his Psychology. 

It is related of a certain man born blind, whose sight 
had been restored, that a picture was shown to him, and 
he was asked to tell what he saw. He said he saw an 
object of divers colors, some bright, others dull, ar- 
ranged in heterogeneous order upon the canvas. That 
is all the picture meant to him. He looked at it as all 
upon one surface without perspective. Then he was 
asked, " Do you not see a house, and behind it a barn, 
and farther back still a forest ? Do you not see men and 
horses and boys in the yard, and various objects in and 
about the fields ? " He looked again carefully. Yes, 
he saw it all now, and put forth his hand to thrust it 
into the picture, and touch the forest and barn. He 
thought it all real now. The barn he supposed did stand 
several inches behind a miniature house built four 
square. But the touch soon disclosed to him his error. 



INTRODUCTION. 1 9 

He was surprised a second time, for he found all these 
objects on the same surface. Now for the first time 
our man born blind is ready to begin a study of the 
picture. 

So it is with the Bible reader. 

At first every statement is on a level with every 
other ; the history and the human nature lie hid ; it 
is just a conglomeration of isolated statements, whose 
loneliness is rendered all the more oppressive by the 
ordinary division of the Bible into chapters and verses, 
which often inserts a dead stop in the very middle of 
a paragraph, or divides into different verses what only 
a comma should separate. The occasional reader of 
the Bible, unless his eyes have been opened by sermons 
and lectures and criticisms, can get no more out of 
the Bible than the restored blind man got out of his 
picture. 

There are bright colors, but there is no idea at all 
of the meaning of the whole. All is seen, yet noth- 
ing is seen, because nothing is seen in its true rela- 
tions. It may even be supposed that the dull colors 
are put about the bright colors to enhance their 
brilliancy. To the minister who is in this condition 
the Bible is a book of texts, and these are purposely 
hid amidst what is uninteresting to discourage habits 
of idleness. 

The second stage in the process is also clearly 
marked. Things begin to appear in their relations. 
It is seen that history, prophecy, and poetry somehow 
imply each other. But still the idea of perspective has 
not been grasped. Now all is real. If the statement 
is made that the mountains clap their hands, they must 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

really have hands to clap. The stories of Abraham, of 
David, and of Elijah, are not of any value at all unless 
they are real. The Pentateuch is valueless and worse, 
if Moses did not write it. Such a student sees nothing 
unless he is permitted to believe that he is dealing with 
the veritable revelation of God and not its history. If 
he has not the thing, he will not admit that he has its 
lesson. He even reduces the whole to an absurdity if 
his way is not the right one. The house is, as he sup- 
posed at first, but a daub of colors, if it is not built four 
square. 

But at last something happens, and our Bible student 
puts forth his hand to touch the story of Abraham or of 
Daniel. He reads a little profane history. He delves 
into the mysteries of the Hebrew lexicon and grammar. 
He learns the story of the foundation of the Old Testa- 
ment canon. He is getting the idea of historical per- 
spective. He touches the "morals of David. ,, They 
are beautiful in their place in the picture. Out of their 
connection they are cruel and bloody and harsh. He 
touches the motive that gave the later portions of the 
Pentateuch to Moses. There was a consciousness of 
the real facts and yet no consciousness of wrong. For 
would not Moses in the later age have approved what 
they approved ? So at last our Bible student comes to 
a correct view of things. But alas, hosts of us have 
never touched the Bible. And we have not learned 
how to appreciate the divine masterpiece. This is not 
wholly our fault. There has been a widely prevalent 
notion that the Bible must not be studied as are other 
books, and that its lessons must somehow be kept apart 
from our unholy secular life. What we need to do is to 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

touch the Bible with our every-day experience, look at 
it in the light of the common places as well as of the 
uncommon places of our existence. And it is evident 
also that we must make free and large use of the helps 
placed in our hands by recent discoveries. 



CHAPTER I. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



" With the righteousness of the prophets, from Amos to Jeremiah, Chris- 
tianity might at once have joined hands." 

Hermann S. Schultz. 



" The blood is said to be the life ; it is therefore the spirit or life of the law 

which does away sin. . . . The gospel is nothing but the spirit of the law, which 

is the word, or logos, spoken in the law, brought forth from the shadows of the 

old dispensation" 

Hoska Ballou. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



CHAPTER I. 

BACK JO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

I. Ours is an age in which the cry is, more or less, 
" Back to the Past ! " In philosophy the cry some 
years ago was heard everywhere, " Back to Kant ! " 
And this was met by the counter-cry, "Back to his 
Interpreters ! " In theology we hear the cry, " Back 
to Luther and the Reformation ! " And we hear 
alongside it, " and this means ' Back to Christ and 
the Apostles ! ' " 

In Christian history, so far as I know, Paul first 
raised this cry. He saw in Christianity the overthrow 
of Judaism, and the revival of Old Testament Prophet- 
ism. And so he raised the cry among his Christian 
brethren, "Back to Abraham and the Prophets ! " We 
have Paul's word for it that Christianity was a return 
to the ideals of the classic period of Hebrew religion. 
The law, he argued, came in as a side issue, necessary 
because of man's weakness, but interrupting the direct 
line of development which in Christ is restored and 
given by unmistakable proofs the fulness of the divine 
approval. 

Now, if Paul thus goes back to the prophetic portions 
of the Old Testament for his starting-point, and other 

25 



26 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

New Testament writers just as obviously take their 
start from the legal side of the Jewish Scriptures, we 
ought frankly to admit that the new religion may here 
and there have limitations which are due entirely to 
the limitations of the past, out of which it came. And 
to recognize this is to free ourselves from the bondage 
of dogmas that are no longer helpful to our religious 
development. We can say, with truth, that Christi- 
anity took these as a part of its inheritance from Juda- 
ism, but that they are no more a part of Christianity 
than are tunics, girdles, and sandals. These were worn 
by the early Christians, not as a part of their religion, 
but because they were in style. 

Not only does a return to the Old Testament reveal 
to us with trenchant force the temporal character of 
certain doctrines and customs that the Church has bur- 
dened itself with in the past, but it also shows that 
many misinterpretations of the Old Testament have 
been handed over to the New Testament to vitiate 
also its message. The fundamental New Testament 
doctrines, in fact, have been very largely corrupted by 
a misunderstanding of the real nature of the Old 
Testament and its relation to the New. 

2. The fact is, the common method must be re- 
versed. We have been wont to interpret the Old 
Testament in the light of the New. We have seen in 
it nothing but Christian doctrine. What we need to 
do now is to go to the Old Testament not only for 
illustrations of the New, but for a more full and com- 
plete understanding of its essential doctrines. Out of 
the modern movement, which has restored the Old 
Testament to us, will come, I doubt not, a new point 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 2J 

of view, which will restore the New Testament to us 
with a fulness and completeness of meaning that it 
never before had. Back to the Old Testament as a 
book of history, of ethics, of religion, and of sociology ! 
This is our message and our "hobby." The preaching 
of the Old Testament to our own age is truly great. 
And this is due not alone to the fact that it is an able 
defender raised up out of the past for the doctrines of 
the Christ. It is this, but it is more : it is also their 
divinely called Creator and Teacher. 

The thesis suggested by our title is one which can- 
not, in any adequate way, be treated in a small volume. 
It will be best, therefore, to eliminate as far as possible 
all side issues, and confine ourselves to a few New 
Testament doctrines which are fundamental, and which 
at the same time have their roots and their high-water 
mark of meaning in the Old Testament. 

3. Some, of course, may incline to doubt whether 
any important New Testament doctrine is taught with 
equal insight in the Old. Indeed, there may be some 
of us who, like Schleiermacher, have been wont to deny 
that there is any vital and organic connection between 
the Testaments. It may be that we have been able to 
see only an accidental and external relationship, due to 
the fortuitous course of the history. Or it may be that, 
with Kant, we have denied to Judaism, as it existed in 
the days of Christ, the name of a religion, and have 
seen in it only a hodge-podge of senseless ritual, to 
which has been added, as the only redeeming feature, 
a code of purely statutory laws. 

That such a view is arbitrary and unphilosophical is 
evident from a multitude of considerations. As Prof. 



28 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Edward Caird correctly maintains, all new movements 
have their roots in the past, and a new movement 
which denies every thesis of its predecessor is depen- 
dent upon its predecessor for the number and form of 
its denials. It may use all the rhetoric, all the logic, 
all the passionate and holy denunciation of its rival, by 
simply going through and inserting the negatives. But 
the dependence is more far-reaching than even this. 
Extremes meet. In the higher mathematics a positive 
infinity passes at a single bound to a negative infinity. 
A number increasing by minute additions from one to 
infinity, by the same minute addition passes from in- 
finity-affirmative to infinity-negative. Anything carried 
to its limit is at the nearest possible point to its oppo- 
site. It is even as we so often say, " Extremes meet/' 
Brahminism must produce Buddhism by inevitable 
decree. And the relation between them is a vital one. 
Jewish legalism carried to its logical conclusion is Paul- 
inism. And a part of the conclusion in each case is 
the glorification of the person who stands as the type 
of the new law written on the heart ; the persons, I 
say, of the Buddha and of the Christ. 

4. But not only is Judaism a preparation for Chris- 
tianity, a stage in the development of the most perfect 
and complete religion, but it has also certain permanent 
elements that can never be superseded. In certain 
lines Hebrew religion reached to well-nigh the summit 
of human aspiration. Newman Smyth, in his "Christian 
Ethics," regards Judaism as the second greatest religion 
of the' world. And if we take it in its logical develop- 
ment up to the present time, who can deny that this is 
so? In the same vein Schultz says, "Christ and his 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 2Q 

apostles do not regard the Old Testament religion as a 
mere outward historical preparation for Christianity, 
but as a form of piety which could and would continue 
to be the foundation even of Christian piety." In this 
opinion he is correct, but he follows this with a remark 
that ought not to be accepted without limitations. He 
says, "The Old Testament religion can be understood 
only in connection with, and as an essential part of, 
Christianity." 1 This has been the bugbear of Old 
Testament scholarship. It has been said that the real 
meaning of a prophecy or a doctrine hung fire until its 
New Testament fulfilment. And that the real meaning 
of an Old Testament writer is in every case to be de- 
termined by an appeal to its analogue in the New Tes- 
tament. I affirm that just the reverse is true. The 
meaning of a New Testament writer is to be determined 
by an appeal to the religious notions upon which he 
was working, and which gave the form, and to a greater 
or less degree the content, of his thought. It is not 
true that the Old Testament must be understood in the 
light of the New with half the emphasis that it is true 
that the New must be understood in the light of the 
Old. The very existence of modern Judaism, and its 
rank among the religions of the world, shall be my evi- 
dence for this statement until I have furnished other 
and better proof. 

5. Not only have many things happened in recent 
years to suggest our theme, but much has come to pass 
that has seemed to prove its fundamental thesis. There 
has been a marvellous revival of Old Testament study 

1 O. T. Theol. i. 51, 52; with which Smend also seems to agree [A, 
T. Rel.]; each $6.00. Geschichte, P. 6, ff. 



30 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

within the last few years. Much has been done in 
churches, schools, and colleges to create a more cheer- 
ful and sympathetic study of the Old Testament. There 
was need enough of the enthusiasm that has been ex- 
pended, and fortunately we are already reaping the har- 
vest. Yet much remains to be desired. There are 
many superficial judgments passed upon the Jewish 
Scriptures that are unworthy the men that express them. 
They show an utter misapprehension of God's plans in 
the history and education of the race. Nor are these 
judgments the sole possession of the sidewalk philoso- 
phy. Not by any means ! They come from the Chris- 
tian home, and even from the pulpit. But so intimate is 
the connection between the Testaments that the Church 
can scarcely hope to find the world reverencing the New 
when the churchman pronounces hesitatingly on the 
Old. When the Church says, "We do not know about 
the Old Testament ; it seems to be pretty well upset 
by recent criticisms/' it must not surprise us if the 
world begins to say the same of the New. It is a mis- 
take to ignore Old Testament questions, and think 
thereby to gain time and energy for the defence of the 
Christian revelation. I know there are many who 
think that it would be a gain to Christianity if it could 
give up the Old Testament. They say it has proved 
vulnerable in so many places that it costs more to 
defend it than it is worth. 

6. But all this proceeds upon erroneous ideas. The 
Old Testament needs no defence. What it craves 
from the hands and hearts of its friends is an oppor- 
tunity to be known in its true nature, and viewed in 
the light of its aims and its times. The treatment 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 3 1 

which the Old Testament receives from many Chris- 
tians is neither honest nor wise. Had Christianity 
sprung up as a new and independent growth, we might 
allow those who desire to do so to degrade the Old 
Testament to a level with the scriptures of the ethnic 
religions ; but that independence, however rashly as- 
sumed and passionately defended, does not exist. Old 
and New Testaments are parts of one grand whole. 
And for this reason an interest in the Old Testament 
must be revived. An enthusiasm to learn what it 
can teach us better than any other book must be 
aroused, or Christianity has rashly thrown itself in 
the path of its destroyer. No institution can be half 
understood when studied merely as a segment of his- 
tory. As the Old is imperfect without the New, so the 
New is an enigma without the thought-form and moral 
heritage of the Old. 

7. He who would search for the beauties of the 
Hebrew religion must not ignore the critics, but neither 
must he feed upon them alone. He must be content 
to follow behind them. They may be radical and 
destructive ; he must be conservative and constructive. 
It were better to hold to the old views of the Old Tes- 
tament than to have absorbed only the negative and 
baldly intellectual side of the newer movement. In- 
deed, it is a question whether the cause of true religion 
is not injured more by those who swallow the higher 
criticism without digesting it, than by those who con- 
tinue to plod along in the old exegesis, but yet see in 
the Hebrew Scriptures their rich vein of spiritual 
meaning. Many a man whose principles of criticism 
are right fails to apprehend the first A B C of the reli- 



32 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

gious consciousness of the Jews ; while many others 
who do not know the first word about the methods 
and aims of the critics, yet commune with God face 
to face through the medium of an Old Testament 
story or song or sermon. 

Let the old tradition stand until it is overthrown by 
the manifest facts of science. On the other hand, so 
far as the positions of the old views were assumed, let 
them be held lightly, as all assumptions should be. 
When, however, the tradition is based upon fact, let it 
be defended with all the logic and learning possible. 
For when the sifting shall all have been done, enough 
of fact will surely remain to warrant us in affirming 
that the Old Testament had its origin in a series of 
divine revelations. Had not God revealed himself in 
a unique manner through towering personalities we 
are assured that we should have had no Bible. It is 
not out of existing institutions alone that society grows. 
It is in the hidden and innermost depths of inspired 
souls that " human society has its secret and myste- 
rious roots " (Wellhausen). 

8. When we have decided to place the Old Testament 
upon a series of revelations, we have made ourselves a 
laughing-stock to the age unless we define our position 
more in detail. " Any one," it may be said, " can 
reveal as much of moral and religious truth as Amos 
or Hosea or Habakkuk. ,, This Kind of criticism, and 
it is all too prevalent, wholly ignores historical perspec- 
tive, and is alien to the scientific spirit. The question 
is not whether a Christian citizen, in whose veins are 
the habits and aspirations of nineteen Christian centu- 
ries, could surpass Amos. But the question is whether 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 33 

an Aztec or a Zulu can equal him or even approach his 
grandeur of soul. Nay, the question is not whether 
an Aztec could equal Amos, but whether an Aztec race 
could follow an Amos with an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, and 
an Ezekiel, a John Baptist, a Jesus, and a Paul. The 
question involves all this. 

9. I raise, finally, the cry of back to the Old Testa- 
ment, because it teaches by example the lessons which 
the New so often only gives in precept. 

A reason why we should regard the Old Testament 
as a part of the Christian Bible is the fact, widely 
recognized, that the Old Testament is one of the 
richest books in all literature, in its broad, honest, and 
sympathetic views of human nature. The New Tes- 
tament is weak upon the human side. It is replete 
with dogma, but deficient in character painting. It is 
sketchy. Two lives only are traced for us in detail, 
and these but for short periods. Character does not 
develop before our very eyes. The New Testament 
glistens with inspirations, with insights into the divine. 
It abounds in pictures, carefully drawn of men caught 
in the sublimest attitudes of . which a human soul is 
capable. I speak of the rash self-assertion of Peter's 
denial, of Stephen's martyrdom, of Paul's conversion, 
his trial before Agrippa, his parting with the elders of 
Ephesus. But the Old Testament is richer and more 
full on this same human side. To speak of the whole 
Bible as an epic, we may call the Old the setting which 
gives the New its interest and its meaning. Here 
love-song and story, poetry and poetic prose, history 
and annals, worldly wisdom and religious fervor, the 
pessimistic wail of the sensualist and the buoyant 



34 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

laughter of shepherd and shepherdess, all commingle. 
We are kept in intimate relations with great characters 
for long intervals. We trace the growth of mind, and 
the development of soul. We learn all one's foibles. 
We come to see in what his strength consists. We are 
not limited to the one man, however, or to his age. We 
can study man in his relations. The development of 
national character, as well as of individual character, is 
portrayed. We can trace the growth of the idea of 
God, of sin, and of salvation, from rude beginnings to 
enviable perfections. Reforms go on gathering mo- 
mentum as time multiplies in years, with here and 
there a backsliding whose causes may or may not 
appear. We can watch the effect upon the national 
and individual life of manly wrestlings with the knotti- 
est problems of all time. In one age, it is between a 
spiritual and a sensuous deity ; in another, it is the 
question of heredity and individual responsibility ; in 
still another, it is between virtue and happiness, as 
always united or as united only sometimes and in some 
lives. Then there is that internecine struggle with 
practical atheism and moral indifference, voiced in so 
many of the Psalms. In all of these, the highest genius 
of Israel was victorious, and the power of God as a 
Saviour of his people was vindicated. 

Is it necessary to say more in this direction in order 
to convince one of the grandeur of the Old Testament 
revelation ? 



CHAPTER II. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR ITS 
OWN SAKE. 



" The Old Testament possesses distinctive characteristics of its own, which 
must ever secure for it a permanent position and influence in the Church" 

" Truthfulness, honesty, sincerity, justice, humanity, philanthropy, generos- 
ity, disinterestedness, neighborly regard, sympathy with the unfortunate or the 
oppressed, the refusal to injure another by word or deed, cleanness of hands, 
purity of thought and action, elevation of motive, singleness of purpose, — these 
and such as these . . . are the virtues which, again and again, in eloquent 
and burning words, are commended and inculcated in the pages of the Old 
Testaments 

S. R. Driver. 



CHAPTER II. 

BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR ITS OWN SAKE. 

I. No subject of study can be more interesting and 
profitable, considered even from a secular point of view, 
than the history of the Hebrew people from the earliest 
times to the close of the first Christian century. The 
history of Israel has taught the world, inspired the 
world, moralized the world, as has no other history 
under heaven. To Judaism and Christianity the civil- 
ized world goes for its religion and its ethical ideal. 
It is here that we meet with the greatest statesmen, the 
purest preachers, and the noblest lives. It is here that 
we meet not only men who lived nobly, but men who 
refuse to be satisfied till their brothers and sisters also 
live nobly with them. It is in Hebrew history that to 
a marked degree we find God in history. Hebrew his- 
tory is the story of human progress under the guidance 
of the Spirit of God. And the Bible is written with this 
end in view. It shows that God is the teacher of the 
race. 

The Jews were indeed a peculiar people. And at the 
first sight, as we glance over an outline of their civil 
and political progress, we are almost forced to the con- 
clusion that a nation so peculiar, so small, and so insu- 
lar in its habits, can by no possibility have greatly 

37 



38 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

influenced the course of the world's history in succeed- 
ing ages. Yet the very exclusiveness and littleness of 
Israel fitted it in a special way to become the teacher 
of the world for all time. Israel does not teach us 
many lessons, but it teaches one lesson well. And we 
need not be long in deciding what that lesson is. 

2. Let us note briefly some of the things that Israel 
did not do. It did not produce a great world conqueror. 
There were times when the Hebrews were ambitious to 
rule. The empire of David was not inconsiderable, 
and three hundred years later Jeroboam II. enlarged 
the borders of the nation, and forced the surrounding- 
nations to submit to his rule. But at no time was this 
extended sway enduring. Indeed, it was always de- 
pendent upon the misfortunes of the great Semitic em- 
pires in the heart of Asia ; and when, finally, shortly 
after the death of Jeroboam II., the arms of Assyria 
began to be successful, Israel lost its political independ- 
ence, never again to regain it for any considerable 
time. 

Neither did the Hebrew people produce a philosophy. 
There is some dealing with abstractions in the Book of 
Job. There is some theorizing in Proverbs and Eccle- 
siastes. But no system of philosophy appears like that 
of Greece. Even the God of the Hebrews is accepted 
as a matter of course. He is named, but not defined. 
His attributes are nowhere catalogued. The intellec- 
tual process whereby we conceive him is nowhere 
outlined. 

The Jews have left us no works of art. Some of the 
utensils used in the temple service were artistically de- 
signed ; but they were of foreign models, as was also the 



FOR ITS Wtf SAKE. 3 9 

temple of Solomon itself. There was no sculpture, no 
painting. The teraphim, or household images, were 
perhaps busts of deceased ancestors. But they were 
rudely carved, and do not deserve to be classed as works 
of art. Something was done by the Jews in music, 
but what and how much is unknown. The musical 
terms which occur in the Book of Psalms are untrans- 
latable. 

Neither were the Jews lovers and careful students 
of nature for its own sake. There is a late tradition 
that Solomon was a botanist ; but it is of little value. 
While the poets and prophets display a considerable 
knowledge of their native surroundings, they have left 
us nothing that may be claimed as in the faintest de- 
gree suggestive to the student of natural science. So, 
then, we must search farther if we would find the true 
value of Hebrew history. 

3. We need not read a whole book of the Bible, in- 
deed a chapter is sufficient, to convince us that to the 
Jew everything is subordinate to religion. What patri- 
otism, philosophy, science, and art are to the nations, 
religion is to the Jew. Jahveh is the nation's God and 
king. For him they will live or die. The fear of him 
is the beginning of wisdom. To know him is the high- 
est philosophy. His holiness is the most perfect beauty. 
His will is the highest good. 

The Hebrews were adepts in religious literary art. 
But they have not even here a wide range ; they must 
make up in intensity where they are deficient in 
breadth. The writings of their prophets are unique. 
Prophecy is the creation of the Hebrew spirit ; no other 
literature has anything like it, or nearly like it. And 



40 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

it is this very part of the Hebrews' contribution to 
modern culture that has been the chief inspiration of 
all the world's greatest and best loved reformers. The 
Bible, then, is the world's greatest text-book on religion. 
The civilized nations are Jewish and Christian in their 
religion. 

A large body of men and women in these civilized 
lands continue, like the ancient Hebrews, to subordi- 
nate all else to their religion. Their religion is their 
philosophy. It is their science, their poetry, and 
their music. Draw them in conversation away from 
their religion, and they are lost. Ask them a question 
upon which they cannot bring their religion to bear, 
and they have no answer. We, as minister, lawyer, 
doctor, or man of the world, are going to meet these 
and similar people. Some of these we will desire for 
friends. It behoves us then as a matter of general 
information, if for no other reason, to acquaint our- 
selves with the book which is the religious teacher of 
the masses. 

But we have by no means said all when we have said 
thus much. The Bible is not the book it is by chance. 
The world did not choose it by lot. The Bible is the 
text-book on religion of the civilized world because it 
deserves to be. The religion of the Bible is so strong 
on the practical and moral side, that even he who half 
disbelieves in religion may study the Bible, when he has 
been shown the way, with a real zest. 

There is no greater moral and practical civilizing force 
in the world to-day than the Hebrew and Christian 
Scriptures. This fact is very widely admitted. This 
being so, it follows, as a matter of course, that a knowl- 



FOR ITS OWN SAKE. 4 1 

edge of the nature and contents of these Scriptures 
will greatly augment a man's influence, whatever be his 
vocation. A knowledge of Biblical ideas and ideals will 
at once put a man in touch with the general line of ad- 
vance. Along with progress in medicine and law and 
mechanics goes progress in religion, and vice-versa. The 
Bible is a book that has ever been interpreted as on the 
side of advance. The Bible is a book which illustrates 
the law of evolution as does no other. The doctrine of 
the atonement has shifted as often as our ideas of crim- 
inal law have been amended. So everywhere, a few 
years ago, the Bible was made to favor individualism : 
modern books bristle with quotations placing the em- 
phasis on the side of solidarity : on the practical side 
the Bible is the most complex and versatile book in our 
libraries. Not an age since the Christ but has ignored 
some part of it. In other words, no age has quite suc- 
ceeded in living up to the good, and casting away that 
which is effete. When we study the individual Christian 
life we find the same to be true. No one lives a life 
quite so rich and complex as the perfect life outlined 
by the Bible. 

4. In view of these facts, it is to be deplored that 
the people of the Christian world are ignorant of the 
Bible. We owe it to the Bible that we are what we 
are. It is the Bible history that we are completing and 
carrying on to its glad consummation. Some may have 
come to think that there is no Bible history. That 
criticism has destroyed the belief in the historical vera- 
city of the Old and even of the New Testament. This 
is not so. The highest proof of the divinity of the 
Christian religion lies in church history, and more 



42 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

especially in the life of the Church to-day. So the 
religion of the Old Testament is an historical religion. 
It was developed in connection with the Hebrew 
history. It finds its proof and its divinity in the fact 
that it produced and directed that history, and thus 
produced the mother soil out of which Christianity 
grew. 1 If, then, it is the Bible histpry that we are 
completing, shall we not fail or work amiss if we ignore 
our guide ? Still, there is a bright side. The Bible is 
more widely read and better understood than ever 
before. The number of those who can appreciate and 
enjoy its ethics and religion is multiplying rapidly. 
Colleges are taking up the Bible as a text-book, and 
supplementing the work of the home, the church, and 
the Sunday-school. It is also to be expected that the 
masses will remain ignorant of certain parts of the 
Scriptures for some time to come. The Bible is a 
library, and most of us have our favorite authors there. 
Jehu, Ahab, Jeremiah, and Haggai are but names to 
multitudes who love Job, while a man of considerable 
intelligence might read the Book of Job, and entirely 
miss its underlying thought. Job is the work of a 
master hand, and great works necessarily address them- 
selves to the few. The great thoughts of the world are 
a rich mine yet to be discovered and utilized by the 
masses. But the progress of the world depends upon 
this very discovery. It therefore becomes the duty of 
those who can, to assist their brothers in the search 
after the true gospel of the world's great prophets. 

5. The Bible teacher need not be discouraged by the 
fact that his #text-book contains chapters that are not 

1 Smend's Alttestamentliche Religions-Geschichte, S, 6. 



FOR ITS OWN SAKE. 43 

only little read, but less understood. All noble litera- 
tures contain books that speak to the few. Virgil and 
Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, are mere names to 
people who ought to know them by heart. It cannot, 
then, be a misplaced enthusiasm which urges that the 
Bible, as well as the other classics, be read more and 
more carefully. These are the books that ought to pro- 
foundly influence the world, rather than those built 
upon the shifting sands of the present. These good 
old books have momentum. They are the world's true 
sustenance. They cost its life-blood. They voice the 
greatest struggles ; they mark the highest ideals. They 
come to us with a divine glow, with a genuine inspi- 
ration. 

But inspiration is nothing without life, and life is 
nothing without personality. The Bible is inspired be- 
cause there are inspired men to-day, who, guided by it, 
once more bring its thought to us fresh from God. 
The influence of no book can be judged merely by the 
extent to which it is read. There are living epistles, 
inspired by these written ones, which are known and 
read by all men. There is a descending line through 
artist, teacher, and pupils ; and one of our own poets has 
said, " Artists are few, teachers are thousands, and the 
world is large." The pupils may not know the artist, 
while yet a faithful teacher has inspired them with his 
spirit and his thought. I suspect that in this way the 
influence of the Bible far surpasses computation. But 
while this is a fact to be thankful for, it is hardly the 
result with which we can be satisfied. If the Bible is 
good at second hand, it is better at first hand. And all 
may become artists. Most of us have the time ; but we 



44 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

spend it with inferior books, we go to inferior teachers. 
"Too seldom do the best of us read the best books. ,, 
To desire from the heart the best things is a lesson not 
easily learned. 

6. There is also an obstacle of an external sort in 
the way of appreciative Bible study. The classics are 
the products of a former age. A foreign language 
shuts their thought away. The people we meet with 
are clad differently, think differently, and feel differ- 
ently, from any now living. To derive a real benefit 
from their inspirations we must learn their ways and 
habits. We must transplant ourselves into their age. 
As the centuries roll by this task becomes at once 
harder and more easy ; harder because our ways are 
constantly becoming more unlike those of the past, 
easier because with added culture we are becoming 
more versatile and sympathetic. It is easier, on the 
whole, because of the remoteness of the Scriptures, to 
give up to the burning questions of the day. This is 
largely right. We ought to throw ourselves into the 
current, and fight manfully the battles of the moment. 
Here and now our task is set. Our real work is for 
our own age. But no life is stable that is not rooted 
in the past. The hot, impassioned present is unstable 
and fleeting. Eternity is not here, permanence is not 
here. The world's true culture cannot be obtained 
from this source. It is the present become past, frozen 
in the grasp of some great classic, some Holy Scrip- 
ture, — it is this that has the true culture value. And 
it is as thus cultured that we are best able to make 
history in the present. 

7. A great deal of Biblical study in the past has 



FOR ITS OWN SAKE, 45 

been unproductive. It has laid false emphasis upon 
details. It has been made subservient to old-time 
prejudice and assumption. A great deal of Biblical 
study in the present is likewise unspiritual, because the 
great prophet who shall re-tell for the soul the story of 
Israeli history in the light of modern scholarship is 
yet to appear. Already, however, much healthy recon- 
structive work has been done. Some of it is of an en- 
during order. Very rapidly the permanent is being 
separated from the transient. All that was inspiring 
and instructive in the old exegesis yet remains intact. 
The new principles are getting pretty well established. 
In the leading schools the study of the Bible is scien- 
tific. It should be scientific everywhere. It may easily 
become so. For this kind of study has been popularized. 
The processes and results have both been given to us. 
Every teacher, every educated person, may now know 
how to interpret the Bible if he will. 

8. I say the results have been given to us. It may 
be thought that by a scientific study of the Bible is 
meant a merely critical study. This is not so. Just 
as soon as we get beyond the period of polemics and 
apolegetics we are ready to proceed to a literary, a 
moral, and a religious study of the Bible. It is here 
that the highest powers of the soul are called into play. 

As mere discipline, Biblical study, scientifically pur- 
sued, is of the most profound and comprehensive order. 
The languages of the Bible are chief representatives 
of the two great families of the world, Aryan and 
Semitic. They are wholly unlike. Very seldom in- 
deed does the same word find its way into both 
branches. That student of philology must go halting 



46 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

who knows no language outside his own family. But 
outside the Aryan tongues no language has a claim 
equal to that of the Hebrew. Nowhere are the prob- 
lems of text criticism so fascinating, so clear cut, and 
so full of revelations of momentous consequence, as 
those of the Bible. Especially is this true of the Old 
Testament, where the chief divergent readings come to 
us in a Greek translation. Then there is the Higher 
Criticism with its dramatic history, and its tragic prom- 
ises. No study can offer stronger inducements to 
mere intellectualism than the critical study of the Bib- 
lical literature and history. Our whole philosophy of 
history is involved. Indeed, some of us approach the 
Bible without any idea of God's plans in the develop- 
ment of the world. And we leave the study without 
any idea of God's plan in the Bible. The higher criti- 
cism cannot take the first step in such a shiftless man- 
ner. A man without a historical sense is wholly at 
sea as a Bible student. Here is where many of the 
older scholars failed. They did not catch the first and 
profoundest lesson of Scripture, that revelation is edu- 
cation ; that individual and race are progressive ; that 
the life of the race is the life of the individual writ 
large and conversely. It is evident, then, that a scien- 
tific study of the Bible involves a clear formulation of 
our conception of God's plans in history. As a mere 
disciplinary study this is valuable beyond computation. 
Books must be dated, their occasion and purpose dis- 
covered, and the whole Hebrew history reconstructed 
in the light of these investigations. 

9. It is confessed on all sides that the Bible contains 
a few books, which, from a merely literary point of 



FOR ITS OWN SAKE. 47 

view, belong to the few great classics of the world. 
In the study of these there is offered the best opportu- 
nity for literary criticism and appreciation. On the 
ethical and religious side these literary masterpieces of 
the Bible are especially inviting. We may and must 
study critically and scientifically the Bible ideals in 
morals and religion. We must not be prejudiced at 
the outset either for or against. We can neither 
admire all nor condemn all. When our historical 
criticism has set the various grades in the line of their 
development, it is the part of the ethical and religious 
critic to extol or condemn in the light of the morality 
and religion of the age. And further, it is his forte, so 
far as possible, to construct in detail the ideal toward 
which the development tends. Such work involves not 
only criticism, but appreciation. It is by this work 
that the very highest powers of the human spirit are 
disciplined and educated. The true critic is construc- 
tive in his work. When he detects the goal of God in 
history, he throws his whole soul into the work of 
realizing that goal. 

10. The Bible is a cause, a country, and an age, and 
requires infinite time and infinite toil fully to accom- 
plish its work. The Bible student has need of judg- 
ment, of scientific imagination, of philosophic and 
moral insight. And further, the Bible student needs 
to be, and if he study the Bible faithfully he will 
become, a man of the Spirit, a child of God. 

11. And this leads to that characteristic of the 
Bible which is greatest and most precious of all. It is 
the book of our religion. Any impartial study of it 
will surely create in us a deep sense of the beauty of 



48 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

its thought, the purity of its ideals, and the uplift of its 
inspirations. To know it is to love it ; to understand it, 
even in a small measure, is to make it the monitor of 
our souls. We have a profound interest in the Bible 
because it is the book of our private devotions and 
secret musings. We love it because it tells us, in 
language that we cannot distrust, of God, our heavenly 
Father, of Jesus, his Son, and of the home of the soul 
where all is peace and joy and love. 



CHAPTER III. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR THE 
DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 



" We may, I suppose, say that what we mean by inspiration is an influence 
which gave to those who received it a unique and extraordinary spiritual in- 
sight, enabling them thereby, without superseding or suppressing the human 
faculties, but rather using them as its instruments, to declare in different de- 
grees, and in accordance with the needs or circumstances of particular ages or 
particular occasions, the mind and purpose of God. Every true and noble 
thought of man is indeed, in a sense, inspired of God? 

S. R. Driver. 



CHAPTER III. 

BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR THE DOCTRINE OF 
INSPIRATION. 

I. An angel comes to announce the destruction of 
Sodom. He speaks Hebrew and the people do not. 
They hear his voice, but do not understand a word, and 
he appears to them as a babbler. An apostate Hebrew 
also stands by and hears the angel's words. He under- 
stands everything, but he looks upon the angel as a 
fanatic and pays no heed to his warning. Lot, too, 
hears his words and understands them. But, more'than 
this, he sees that it is an angel, believes his message, 
and flees from Sodom. The messenger and his mes- 
sage are unavailing without certain intellectual and 
moral preparations. He must be understood, and it 
must appear reasonable. Nor are these all ; certain 
spiritual requirements are necessary to enable one to 
judge of the nature of the messenger or of his message. 
Lot knew it was an angel. But how did he know ? 
The appearance was that of a man, nothing more. In 
other words, Lot had to be inspired in order to recog- 
nize his heavenly messenger. Professor Ladd is per- 
fectly logical when he affirms that an infallible Bible 
can be of little use, unless there is an infallible Church 
to perpetuate an infallible recognition and interpreta- 
tion of its message. This principle in some form has 

Si 



52 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

in fact always been recognized by the Church. Spirit- 
ual things are spiritually discerned. The Church prays 
for divine guidance that it may understand and absorb 
the divine word. But how different from that which 
the Church asks for was that which Isaiah obtained ! 
He did not proclaim his message as one altogether new 
and unheard of. His prophecies were but the efforts 
of a pious Israelite to understand and fulfil the earlier 
word of Jahveh to Moses. And Moses himself worked 
upon the basis of the revelations of truth made by yet 
earlier teachers. So, then, not only is an inspired 
Church a logical necessity, but it is an actual fact, and 
it reaches back into a remote and prehistoric past for 
its beginnings. 

The question may be approached from another side. 
Let us suppose that we have been present at the crea- 
tion of the world, granting that it took place in substan- 
tial accord with the account in Genesis, what would we 
have seen ? Would we have seen the Deity moving 
about among his materials like an architect or an art- 
ist, adding a little here and taking away there, building 
and remodelling until all was finished ? Obviously, no ! 
What we should have seen would not have been in any 
way unlike mere becoming or growth. God, as spirit, 
would have been himself unseen. His method of work 
would have been hid from us as it is now hid from us. 
We would have seen light suddenly flash forth, but we 
would have heard no voice but the thunder. We would 
have seen the green herbs sprouting forth from the 
earth, but we would not have seen the cause. We 
would have seen particles of dust assuming the form 
of a man and at last coming to life. But we would not 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 53 

have seen God breathing into the nostrils of the clay- 
image. We would have no better evidence for our be- 
lief in God than we have now. We would have been 
compelled in the last resort to take his existence on 
authority or infer it from his works. 

Suppose we had been present when Jeremiah or Paul 
or Luke wrote his contribution to our Bible, different 
customs and habits aside, would we have seen anything 
which we do not see in the study of an author of our 
own day as he sits writing his book ? If we questioned 
the writer as to motives we would undoubtedly find 
those of the Biblical writers higher than those of the 
majority of the authors of our own day. But if we 
questioned them as to their methods of work, if we 
asked them as to their inspiration and their authority, 
we would find their answers as nearly identical as their 
different temperaments and their different " Zeitgeists " 
would permit. The Bible would seem to have come 
into being in the same way as other literatures. Luke 
in his preface tells us as much. Could we question 
him as to his inspiration or his infallibility, he could 
give us nothing that would not be consistent with the 
spiritual insight and general accuracy of any conscien- 
tious writer. I am thoroughly convinced that the 
majority of the Biblical authors were conscious of no 
unique and, in our sense, unnatural or supernatural 
powers. The confessions made by Jeremiah and Eze- 
kiel as to the divineness of their words were not unique 
confessions in that age. The false prophets appealed 
to the same authority and in the same terms. And by 
the same methods as those used by Jahveh's servants, 
the magicians of the time were believed able to work 
miracles. 



54 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

2. The Biblical doctrine of inspiration arose out of 
the circumstances of early social life, and its relations 
with the divine. In an age when only the few knew 
how to read and write, the power to write was looked 
upon as a miraculous gift of the Deity. And this had 
taken such firm hold upon the people at the time when 
writing became common, that the doctrine of inspira- 
tion was already too firmly established to be overthrown. 
Another series of facts conduced to this result which 
has too often been ignored. In early society the 
tribe or nation is everything, the individual is nothing. 
This has been said so often as to become a truism. 
Yet many of its consequences and implications have 
escaped us. If the individual is nothing, he may not 
speak in his own name. In early times truth was sup- 
posed to come through the priest, who obtained it by lot ; 
that is, through asking Jahveh questions which could 
be answered by "yes" or "no," by Urim or Thum- 
min. Jahveh and the nation are alone individuals with 
the right to speak. Then arose the prophets who were 
really individualists, but were unconscious of the fact. 
Amos, for example, comes forward with a new message, 
a new doctrine. But he does not herald it as his. 
Who is he, that he should speak? The word is not his, 
but Jahveh's. So all the prophets, in accord with the 
early psychology or early conception of society as a 
unit, merge their individual voice in the voice of the 
whole, and call it a "thus saith the Lord." 

Inspirationism and primitive socialism go together. 
In an age when the individual is nothing, he must say 
nothing. If he has a new truth or a new idea he must 
explain it according to the philosophy of the time. He 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 55 

must affirm that he is as are his fellows. In speaking 
he is but a mouthpiece of the Spirit. God is the only 
individual. 

Now, the fact is the prophets were in just this way 
unconscious of their individuality. They did not know 
to the full extent the part played in their revelations by 
their own free, spontaneous mental activity. In fact, 
just because it was free and spontaneous, they said it 
is not our message, but God's word. It is not we who 
speak, but God who speaks in us. Their faith and 
reason were married in feeling. No distinction was 
made between what was thought to be true and what 
was felt to be true. 

The new individualism introduced by Ezekiel and 
Jeremiah prepared the way for the destruction of this 
nai've point of view. To say that each must suffer for 
his owtiy not for his people's sins merely, is to throw 
the individual into a habit of reflection upon his own 
thoughts and plans, and their consequences and effects. 1 
It is to call forcibly to his mind the fact that he thinks 
his own thoughts, and that they are his own creation 
just as much as are the movements of his body. And 
it became the watchword of the new individualism to 
affirm, — 

"The preparations of the mind belong to man; 
Though the answer of the tongue come from Jahveh." 

The Wisdom Literature of the Jews represents just 
that attitude towards truth which we should expect to 

1 So early as Isaiah's day the better class of minds had come to see 
that God could not speak to men his highest truths in dreams, for these 
were illusions; Isaiah xxix. 8. Cf. Pfleiderer's Philosophy of Religion, 
vol. iii. pp. 32, 33. 



$6 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

find in a soul newly emancipated from a bondage to a 
crudely conceived solidarity. The individual begins to 
set up as an authority, not the word of Jahveh to him, 
but his own individual experience. Job, in the face of 
the science and theology of his age, quotes his own 
experience, and makes his name loved for all time by 
asserting his determination to trust his own experience 
against the world. What sublime words those are to 
his friends in which he champions the claims of the new 
individualism. He exclaims, — 

" What ye know, that know I also; 
I am not inferior to you." x 

One has but to glance into the Wisdom Literature of 
the Old Testament to become convinced that this new 
individualism has annihilated the old inspirationism, or 
view of inspiration. Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs 
are built upon experience. They are the work of men 
who put forth divine thoughts as, on one side at least, 
human creations. Yet the victory of individualism 
was not yet won. And as a consequence, all the Wis- 
dom Literature of the Old Testament is anonymous. 
While the sages believed in experience, they did not 
feel that the message would gain by telling whose ex- 
perience lay at the foundation of the message. The 
masses did not believe in the word of man ; they still 
clung to him who used the old formula, "thus saith 
Jahveh." 2 

1 Genung's Epic of the Inner Life, p. 205. 

2 History repeats itself. Modern philosophy, like the ancient, was a 
return to experience. And it began with individualism. Said Descartes, 
"What is truth must show itself true to me." And Locke, with a little 
more caution, repeats the principle. " I must take care to assert nothing 
as truth which cannot show itself true to me." 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. $7 

The later prophets are profoundly influenced by the 
Wisdom Literature, though they still hold to the old 
forms of expression. A "vision from Jahveh " to the 
prophets is often identical with a series of thoughts 
which were the result of investigation and intellectual 
process. 1 In other words, there is a silent confession 
from the prophets themselves that their thoughts were 
running in natural though exalted channels when they 
conversed with God. When Amos says in viii. i that 
God showed him a basket of summer fruit, we are not 
to suppose a vision here. It was as natural for Amos 
to say " God showed me," as for us to say " I saw." 
One is idealism, the other is realism ; one is social, the 
other is individual. 2 To-day the preacher in beginning 
a sermon in the style of Amos viii. I, would say, "As I 
was looking at a basket of decaying fruit upon my study 
table this morning, it occurred to me that there the his- 
tory of our nation was being told." That this is the 
correct view of these claims to inspiration on the part 
of the prophets, is shown by the fact that among Arab 
tribes, where the old solidarity still exists, every act of 
self-assertion on the part of an Arab is begun with a 
"thus saith Allah." This does not rob the Old Testa- 
ment writers of their authority, but by establishing the 
naturalness and modesty of their claims, it establishes 
also the grandeur of their message. 

1 Especially does the late author of Chronicles use " vision' ' in this 
sense. 

2 A noted German philosopher has said, "We do not think; it thinks 
in us." And Emerson says, " we do not make our thoughts; our thoughts 
make us." Possibly after all the psychology of the prophets and poets is 
correct, and our more material one wrong. Cf. E. Caird's Philosophy of 
Kant, or Evolution of Religion. 



58 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

3. " Let us," says Professor Driver, " while we ad- 
here firmly to the fact of inspiration, refrain from defin- 
ing, and especially from limiting, the range or mode of 
its operation." The wisdom of these words appears at 
once when we apply ourselves to the Hebrew Scriptures 
for a definition of this strange influence which is be- 
lieved to have given us our Bible. At the outset we 
are struck with the fact that, according to the Old Tes- 
tament, not only the men who wrote the Bible, but the 
men who lived it, were inspired. And we are equally 
impressed with the fact that, while there is great variety 
in the language used, there is no distinction whatever 
made between the kinds of inspiration of these two 
classes of people. The Spirit of God comes upon 
Gideon and he does something for Jahveh. The spirit 
of God comes upon Isaiah and he writes something. 
The spirit of God comes upon Moses at one time and 
he writes, at another time and he acts. Not only is 
this the same spirit, but it operates in the same man- 
ner in the various cases. In describing these phenom- 
ena the Old Testament writers employ a variety of 
expressions, which show sometimes the dominant ideas 
of different ages, and at all times the fact that the 
effort was being made to describe something spiritual 
and ideal, and essentially beyond the power of language 
to describe. The fact was evident, the real essence of 
the fact was unknown. The spirit is said to come upon 
a man, or it is breathed into him, or it clothes him like 
a garment. In another series of passages the spirit is 
said to touch a man, or to fall or rest upon him. In 
still another circle of ideas God puts or pours or emp- 
ties his spirit upon individuals or societies. 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION, 59 

According to the Old Testament, then, Samson, 
Jephthah, and Saul are as much inspired men as Amos, 
Isaiah, and Ezekiel. Jahveh helps to the same extent, 
and by the same means, the man who lives a noble life, 
and the man who tells for all time the story of it. 
Inspiration reaches out and takes in every vocation. 
Moses the lawgiver, Joshua the general, Aaron the 
priest, Joseph the statesman, Daniel the prophet, and 
Bezaleel the carpenter, all need and may have the illu- 
minating influence of the divine Spirit to aid and guide 
them in their work. Only at a later time was a hard 
and fast line of demarcation drawn between these vari- 
ous forms of inspiration. This appears very clearly 
from a beautiful passage in Isaiah in which the prophet 
appeals to the agricultural customs of his people. He 
speaks of these as inspired or given by God. Yet the 
agriculturist believes also in a living inspiration along 
with this received code of rules. If he is truly religious 
and truly successful in his work, it is because God 
instructs him. 1 In the Old Testament, then, every 
faithful servant of God lives an inspired life. God has 
poured out his spirit upon all flesh. Every vocation 
that is honorable is sanctified ; and to it the true man 
is called, not by passion or ambition or greed, but by 
the spirit. Nor has the New Testament departed from 
these notions. According to it every true Christian is 
a living epistle, and a living inspired epistle. For the 
spirit of God is not merely in touch with him, not 
merely put or poured upon him, but shed abroad in his 
heart. 

An extended study of the various passages in the 

1 Isa. xxviii. 26-29 and W. R. Smith's Prophets of Israel, pp. 285, 286. 



60 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Old Testament where the inspiration of men in its 
broad sense is spoken of, reveals the fact that the divine 
influence operates with various degrees of strength, and 
by no means in every c^se continuously. David, who is 
in some acts so worthy the epithet " a man after God's 
own heart," is in other deeds quite as obviously a man 
who " served his own day and generation/' and that not 
too well. So the lives of scarce any of the Old Testa- 
ment characters are above censure in all points. Job 
is called a perfect man, yet he confesses that he has 
uttered folly in his heated dialogue with his friends. 
He asks his friends, — 

"Do ye think to censure words, 
When they are a despairing man's words to the wind? " * 

In the case of those men who were inspired for the 
ordinary duties of their trades, such as Bezaleel, we 
have no right to assume that their work was infallible 
and faultless. Their inspiration did not imply that. 
And, indeed, we hear even the prophets confessing 
that Jahveh has not told them all ; and Jeremiah on 
one occasion was put to shame by a rival prophet, who 
broke in pieces a rude yoke he was wearing as a sym- 
bol of coming captivity. 2 But even granting that the 
inspired writers do not clearly reveal and confess their 
fallibility, by what right, in the light of our present 
discussion, do we maintain that those who wrote the 
Bible should be more honest, more trustworthy, more 
near to God, than those who lived it ? If we can de- 

1 Genung's Epic of the Inner. Life, p. 169. 

2 Jer. xxvii., xxviii. It was not until a subsequent meeting with Hana- 
niah that Jeremiah had an answer for him (xxviii. 13). 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 6 1 

fend for their age the equivocations of Abraham and 
the patent falsehoods of David, can we not see how a 
modern critic can defend the publication in 622 B.C. of 
the Book of Deuteronomy as a work of Moses ? These 
two facts are perfectly analogous, and their significance 
has never been fully recognized. It is not my purpose 
here to affirm that Deuteronomy was foisted upon the 
people under false pretences. Laws grow slowly, and 
always purport to issue logically out of preceding reg- 
ulations. This is equally true of modern and ancient 
law. So there is a residuum of truth in the statement 
that Deuteronomy is the law of Moses, just as there 
was a half truth in the statement of Abraham to the 
king of Egypt that Sarah was his sister. 1 But in both 
these affirmations there are elements that are incon- 
sistent with modern ideas of truth. And to affirm, on 
the basis of an unfounded rationalism, that the in- 
spired writers conformed to our ideas of truth, while 
the inspired characters did not, is to commit one's 
self to open folly. 

4. If this line of argument is correct, we would ex- 
pect growing accuracy on the part of the writers, as we 
find them dealing with characters like Job, who con- 
forms to a higher standard of ethics. There are many 
incidental proofs of this ; for while the body of Deuter- 
onomy claims Mosaic authorship, the Book of Job 

1 Not only laws but dictionaries continue to wear the names of their 
ancient authors. We still speak of Webster's Dictionary. Yet we all 
know that hundreds of new words have been added since Webster's death, 
and hundreds of old words have received from one to five new meanings 
of which Webster himself knew nothing. Imagine proving the early in- 
vention of the Bell telephone by affirming that it is defined by Noah 
Webster, who died in 1843 (four years before Bell was born). 



62 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

makes no claims for itself. Only late and unfounded 
traditions ascribe Job to Moses, and Ecclesiastes and 
Proverbs to Solomon. The books themselves abstain 
from making any claims at all. In the New Testa- 
ment writers we meet with the highest forms of inspi- 
ration ; and while it would not be entirely logical to 
infer that, because they dealt with a perfect life, they 
must have written a perfect account, yet there is a 
strong presumption in favor of the view that the spirit 
and essential teachings of Jesus are faithfully repre- 
sented. The first three Gospels are full of the evi- 
dences of natural and accurate historical composition ; 
the fourth Gospel and Paul are full of spiritual insight, 
prophetic fervor, and religious aspiration. Prof. H. G. 
Mitchell of Boston University seems to be perfectly 
right in affirming that the doctrine of inspiration is 
essentially the same in the two Testaments. He cer- 
tainly believes that we have a better means of getting 
at it in the books of the more ancient volume. He 
says, in the language of Piepenbring, that in the Old 
Testament " we find the expression and experience of 
a higher life, a life produced by God and devoted to 
God. Behind these writings we feel the beat of the 
hearts that inspired them, and behind these hearts we 
feel a higher power, a divine, regenerating, sanctifying 
influence." Prof. Mitchell believes these words true 
of both Testaments. But they do not to him imply 
infallibility in either. " Paul, at least," he says, " seems 
to agree with the more ancient sacred writers ; for he 
says not only 'we have this treasure in earthen ves- 
sels/ but more explicitly, 'we know in part and we 
prophesy in part/ Other passages might be cited to 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 63 

show that, to his mind, inspiration did not imply 
infallibility." 1 

5. The Old Testament writers certainly do not claim 
infallibility for their utterances. In Isaiah's time there 
was a very considerable body of laws in circulation bear- 
ing the name of Moses as their lawgiver. To these 
the people appealed, and refused to listen to the fresh 
light that had dawned in the prophet's own soul. He 
cried out against them for this. He affirmed that 
Jahveh had not ceased to be their God and teacher, and 
he warned them that they had not yet heard all his 
word (Isa. xxix. 12-14). Again, in chapters xv., xvi., 
Isaiah seems to quote from some older prophet an 
oracle concerning Moab. That prophecy had not been 
altogether fulfilled ; and at a later day Isaiah takes this 
up, adds to it some very remarkable words, and it is in- 
serted among his own prophecies. The words added 
are these : " This is the word that Jahveh spake con- 
cerning Moab in time past. But now Jahveh hath 
spoken, saying, Within three years, etc." 2 Jeremiah in 
a famous chapter accuses God of deceiving him, of 
prompting him to utter prophecies which were not to 
come to pass. He is greatly perplexed at all this, and in 
consequence wishes for death, and would blot from the 
calendar the day upon which he was born (xx. 7 fol.). 
Some time after this he happens to be watching a 
potter at his work. By some chance the vessel he was 
forming was marred under his hand. The potter at 

1 Magazine of Christian Thought, vol. xi. pp. 193, 194, a most excel- 
lent treatment of the subject of Inspiration. 

2 Note how all this is obscured in the effort of the King James trans- 
lators to carry out their theory of inspiration. 



64 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

once renounced his original intention, and " made it 
again another vessel as seemed good." This simple 
incident had a wonderful effect upon the prophet. It at 
once occurred to him that, in a higher sense, God too 
might change his apparent plans, if the conditions upon 
which they rested changed. It is to be expected that 
prophecies will fail of fulfilment ; for if the people 
renounce their evil ways, " I will repent of the evil that 
I thought to do unto them." On the other hand, if 
from being righteous they become vile, " I will repent 
of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." 
(Jer. xviii. 1-12). And whereas human hearts are hard, 
and must be constrained to repent and turn to right- 
eousness, the very vehemence and assurance with which 
a prophet foretells the coming calamity becomes the 
occasion of its turning aside through the consequent 
repentance of the people. 1 

A yet more striking example of the conditional 
nature of the prophetic word is shown in Ezekiel's 
book. That prophet, reasoning from the movements of 
the Babylonian army, seemed to foresee, in 586, the im- 
mediate and utter destruction of the powerful, rich, and 
luxurious city of Tyre. He utters his premonitions 
in most eloquent language, and shows himself a master 
student of Phenician art and civilization. The blow 
fell upon Tyre as Ezekiel had predicted. But Tyre 
did not fall. Nebuchadrezzar was not successful, and 
was compelled after thirteen years to raise the siege. 
Ezekiel does not destroy his earlier utterance, or modify 
it to make it fit the facts, but he merely supplements 

1 The prophet Jonah is even angry because the people repented, and 
God did not destroy Nineveh as he had said he was going to do. 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRA TION. 65 

it. His later oracle does not say that moral considera- 
tions entered into the events. He had simply misread 
the strength of Tyre's fortifications, and the ability of 
Nebuchadrezzar's army to overthrow the rock-fortress 
of the city. 1 Ezekiel's second prophecy against Tyre, 
delivered sixteen years after the first, — both are dated 
by Ezekiel himself, — is perfectly fair and honorable. 
He admits that the city was not taken as he had pre- 
dicted. But, says he, " Nebuchadrezzar caused his 
army to serve a great service against Tyre. . . . Yet 
had he no wages, nor his army, from Tyre." And be- 
cause the king of Babylon could not take Tyre, Jahveh 
gave him instead the land of Egypt for his reward. 

Not only do the prophets change their own oracles, 
and edit, post eventum apparently, many of their dis- 
courses, but later prophets again and again come into 
conflict with the word of their predecessors. Every 
great Old Testament prophet has his lists of " ye have 
heard that it hath been said by them of old time." 
Hosea censures Elisha for instigating the wholesale 
slaughter of the house of Ahab by Jehu, 2 and he thinks 
it idolatry to worship Jahveh in the form of a bull ; but 
Elijah and Elisha never censure the people for this. 
The author of Deuteronomy cries out against the use 
of the obelisks (xii. 3) ; but Hosea regards these as a 
legitimate part of the worship of Jahveh (iii. 4). The 
old Book of the Covenant presupposes an altar in every 
town, and proclaims this a sanctuary for him who has 
slain his brother without malice aforethought. (Ex. 

1 Compare Ezek. xxvi. 1-21, especiaily 10-12 and 21, with xxix. 17- 
21. Tyre was first taken by Alexander the Great. 

2 Cf. Hosea i. 4, 5, with 2 Kings ix. 1-3; x. 11. 



66 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

xxi. 14.) Deuteronomy declares that there shall be but 
one altar in all Palestine, and that one at Jerusalem 
(Deut. xii. 5 ff.). The same spirit of God, under differ- 
ent conditions, produces a different and often dissimilar 
revelation. But it is nevertheless the same spirit, and 
there is underneath it all a common purpose, which is 
profoundly ethical and religious. 

When Jeremiah 1 reverses an old proverb which had 
for it the authority of an inspired writer, he declared 
that the earlier statement was not complete, was not in- 
fallible. But for its time it may have been a true word 
of God. That different people and different ages need 
varied presentations of the truth, adapted to their moral 
comprehension and religious needs, is explicitly stated 
by Ezekiel in iii. 4-9, where he says, "All the house of 
Israel are of an hard forehead and a stiff heart." For 
this reason Jahveh has made the prophet's forehead 
" as an adamant, harder than flint." So, too, the New 
Testament looks upon some of the Old Testament regu- 
lations as given because of the hardness of men's hearts 
— that is, a fallible people must have a fallible Bible. 
Only as the moral and religious consciousness of a 
people approaches perfection will their Bible be a per- 
fect book. 

6. It cannot be expected that the New Testament 
will reveal so clearly the idea that revelation through 
the inspiration of chosen instruments is an education 
of the race. The books of the New Testament come 
from practically the same age, and stand upon essen- 
tially the same footing. Yet in principle the New Tes- 
tament supports the interpretation of the facts which 

1 Jer. xxxi. 29, 30, with which compare Ex. xx. 5, xxxiv. 7. 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 67 

has been already given. For example, in Heb. i. 1, 2, 
we find two remarkable adverbs which affirm that God 
in the past revealed his word to the prophets in many 
pieces and in many manners. So, also, in 2 Tim. iii. 16, 
17, we find this remarkable passage : " Every scripture in- 
spired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness : 
that the man of God may be complete, furnished com- 
pletely unto every good work.*' If the prevailing view 
is the correct one, these words were written at a time 
when parts of the New Testament writings were taking 
the place of oral tradition, and when the Old Testament 
canon was a matter of dispute, and several books were 
under fire. Now the Christians, from the use made of 
the Old Testament, knew that to call a book inspired 
was to call it classical, or reliable and authoritative. In 
the light of this fact, the words seem to furnish a rule 
for determining whether or not a particular book is in- 
spired, and not a definition of inspiration itself. If it 
instructs, corrects, and exhorts, it is a word of God to 
the reader; if it abounds in errors, exaggerations, and 
misconceptions, if it does not urge purity of life and 
nobility of thought, it is not a word of God. But if 
this principle is to be applied to the separate books, 
there is apparently no reason why it should not be ap- 
plied to separate chapters of the same book. Church 
history affords tacit admission of this ; for not only was 
it decided by vote, and by the vote of a very uncritical 
Church, what books should constitute our Bible, but 
several of the books were undergoing a very radical 
course of editing at the very time when they were the 
objects of debate. Evidently then at the outset, and 



68 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

by all parties, they were not considered equally inspired 
throughout. 1 

Now, what the history of the Old Testament canon 
shows by example, Paul illustrates in principle. To the 
individual Paul says, " Hold fast the form of sound 
words. " To the whole Church he says, "We have this 
treasure in earthen vessels." 2 These are remarkable 
passages. Paul notices that the tendency of societies 
is to become too conservative. They hold on to the old. 
They swallow books whole, and do not discriminate. 
They marry the form, and refuse to divorce it when 
the soul has vanished. To these, Paul says the form is 
transient, it is an earthen vessel. On the other hand, 
Paul noticed that the individual, the choice, sensitive, 
and ambitious young man (Timothy) tends to radical- 
ism, so to him he says, " Hold fast the form." At any 
rate be sure you have it, and know it at its best before 
you renounce it. And when you would renounce it, do 
it not as an iconoclast, but as one of a society, and if 
possible carry them with you to the newer truth, the 
more perfectly fitting vessel. In Paul (shall we say 
and the author of 2 Timothy ?) then, we find not hard 
and fast statements telling us what is inspired and 
authoritative, but certain wise and carefully worded 
sentences, which are designed to enable us to decide for 
ourselves as individuals, and society to decide for itself 
as an organic whole, what writings are helpful and 
divine, and what are not. 

7. " Nothing," says Professor Driver, " is more de- 
structive of the just claims of Christianity than a false 

1 Professor Toy thinks 2 Tim. iii. 16 should be rendered "every 
writing," that is, every piece of scripture. 2 2 Cor. iv. 7. 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION 69 

theory of inspiration : nothing has led to more fatal 
shipwrecks of faith than the acceptance in youth of 
a priori views of what an inspired book must be, which 
the study of maturer years has demonstrated only too 
cogently to be untrue to fact." 1 It is the arbitrary 
assumptions of the older scholars who adopted the cut 
and dried doctrines of the Jewish Rabbins, that make 
up the dead weight of this doctrine. Yet there are 
unwise theories from other sources. To say, for 
example, with some writers, that God might, had he 
chosen, have written his Bible on the sky where it would 
have escaped all errors of transmission, sounds too 
much like Mill's two and two might be five on some 
other planet. So, too, to say that God " did not care so 
much about the accent or grammar or scholarship of 
his inspired men/' is to make God partial to careless- 
ness and ignorance. To say that God does not care 
how his truth is told, is much the same as saying that 
he does not care what truth is told, or how we hear. 
For a misplaced accent may completely alter the mean- 
ing of a sentence, and an error of grammar may 
render a whole clause meaningless. 

Again, an erroneous view of inspiration has filled the 
pages of history with stumbling-blocks and inconsis- 
tencies. An interesting example of this is shown in the 
decree of the officials who, according to the " Scarlet 
Letter," tried Hester Prynne, or who would have treated 
such an offence in much the same way as Hawthorne 
has there described. These men believed in the 
plenary inspiration of the Bible. Every word of it was 
to them God's own word. They would not have 

1 Sermons p. 156. 



70 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

thought of questioning a jot or tittle of the Gospel 
story. They placed the eighth chapter of John's Gos- 
pel on a level with the others. They accepted it as 
having been dictated to John by the Holy Ghost for 
their instruction. But strange paradox, surprising 
irony of progress, we condemn with all our hearts 
their harsh, unfeeling cruelty, while at the same time 
we strike the beautiful story of Jesus and the fallen 
woman out of our Bibles ! Is there any connection 
between these two facts? Are they merely isolated 
and disjointed cases? or do they, in this connection 
press the suggestion, that we may be just a mite wrong 
as to the practical value of certain beliefs ? There is a 
relation between these seeming isolated cases, and that 
of a very intimate kind. Emerson says if a man 
makes his living by foul means, God will take out of 
the man what he puts into his wallet, or words to that 
effect. If we unduly magnify the importance of in- 
tellectual assent, if the world uses narrow means to 
press a narrow creed, God will take out of the soul 
what he puts into the creed. The reason some creeds 
contain so much is because the souls for whom they 
were fashioned contain so little. On the other hand, 
the short creed implies that the soul has attained its 
majority, and does not care to make a boast before 
men. A belief in plenary inspiration, and the presence 
of "let him that is without sin among you" in its 
proper place in John viii., could not make the Puritan 
elders feel as Hosea felt for his erring wife. What, 
then, has brought us to Jesus' point of view, if we have 
at the same time stricken this story from our Bibles ? 
8. Jesus said to his disciples that it was expedient 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. yi 

that he go away. Only under the guidance of a spirit- 
ual force could they become strong and self-dependent. 
While he was with them they remained children. So, 
in a sense, unless the old hard and fast doctrine of in- 
spiration go away, the true spirit and meaning of the. 
Bible will not come to us. We shall remain babes in 
Christ if we do not cease our endless quibble about in- 
spiration, and strive to get some of this divine gift, 
each one for himself. It is for each one who will have 
it, and take the pains to deserve it ; and it applies not 
to one vocation alone, but to all. Another considera- 
tion, which contains in it the implication of a continued 
and ever clearer manifestation of the divine in the 
human life, is the fact that Jesus' departure secured to 
the Church his spirit. He went away, but the Com- 
forter, Exhorter, or Inspirer came. And it was plainly 
the idea of the early Christians, that this divine Spirit 
would continue to quicken the life of the Church. In 
connection with this thought also, Jesus tells his dis- 
ciples that they would perform greater works than he 
had done. These greater works of theirs would need 
greater words to proclaim them. As a matter of fact, 
language has improved as much since Christ as have 
the mechanical arts. And words have manifold richer 
meanings than formerly. So the very repeating of a 
sentence of Paul's in one of the more complex and ac- 
curate modern languages is a proof of the growing life 
of the Gospel. In no class of words, perhaps, are the 
new meanings more noteworthy than in some of these 
doctrinal words themselves. By giving up erroneous 
views, we do not always need to give up old words. 
The word inspiration itself is a term of divine mean- 



72 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

ing. So, too, those old terms that have been so long 
used as shibboleths of the different schools need not 
and ought not to be set aside. We should believe in 
the verbal inspiration of certain passages. The divine- 
ness is not in the thought, it is not in the fulness of 
the passage, but in the peculiar and happy wording 
of it. There are many such passages. They seem to 
be verbally inspired. The very words are divine. 

Then there is another series of passages where the 
wording is unimportant. There is nothing at all strik- 
ing in the language used, nor is there any hint, as we 
read, that the thought is too great for the words, and 
is bursting the mechanism of the sentence asunder. 
The inspiration is in the thought, it is conceptual in- 
spiration. 

Then there are many passages, and these are especi- 
ally common in the writings of Hosea and Paul, on 
which it is easy to formulate and defend a doctrine of 
plenary inspiration. The words are not striking in 
these passages, the rhetoric is often even bad, and the 
thought is so inadequately expressed that we are sure 
the message was not merely intellectual. Yet there is 
a great soul revealed in the sentence. There is a 
fulness, an overflow of moral passion and religious 
fervor, that are grander and more sublime than fine 
rhetoric or clear thought. It is the divine pleroma. 
And the inspiration of that writer is plenary inspiration. 

9. The proof of the inspiration of the Bible is not to 
be found in the confessions of its authors. Nor are the 
fundamental truths of religion dependent upon our 
belief in inspiration, but the real value of our belief 
in inspiration is dependent upon our apprehension of 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 73 

these truths. The Bible is inspired because it is in- 
spiring. And it is to us inspired to just the extent 
that it reveals to us the eternal things of the spirit. 
In the present day an author often does his really best 
work unconsciously, and without the use of means de- 
termined upon beforehand. I believe that this has 
always been true ; and, therefore, the words of J. Pat- 
erson Smith seem especially significant when he says, 
" It may, perhaps, be possible for a man to be specially 
inspired by God without his knowing it." If this is 
true, are we not forced to the conclusion that inspira- 
tions differ only in degree, and that God was not nearer 
to the past than he is to us, but that he still has his 
inspired prophets and teachers ? 

In order that we may lay hold of the fact that God 
is ever present in human life as the inspirer of all that 
is noblest and best, we must set aside entirely all nar- 
row and ignoble views of inspiration which confine it 
to a particular form, a particular age, and a particular 
people. Mr. Horton has been severely criticized for 
claiming for the late Rev. Charles G. Finney of Oberlin 
a special inspiration from God. It is said that Mr. 
Finney would have been the last to claim such a gift 
for himself. That is just the point. And no sooner 
do we put ourselves in the position of Isaiah or Joel, 
than we see at once that they, too, are very far from 
claiming for themselves what the dogmatists and the 
a priori theologians have claimed for them. 

10. The doctrine of inspiration has had a most won- 
derful influence upon the development of society. It 
has not always taken the lead in the right direction, 
and often it has seemed to actually stand in the way 



74 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

of advance. Yet the history of education shows that 
there is in the grand total an infinite gain, when the 
form is insisted upon as the means of getting at the 
spirit. It is the very form of sound words that must 
become the possession of him who would avoid rash- 
ness and superficiality. The erroneous part of the doc- 
trine came in placing all books and parts of books upon 
the same level, and in looking upon them as originating 
in the divine mind, and that, too, without intimate and 
vital relations to their own times. Even of the Bible 
it should be said, " Some books are to be tasted, others 
to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and di- 
gested/* When this is admitted we are ready to make 
search for the permanent elements in the idea of in- 
spiration itself. The idea of an inspired man and, of 
an inspired book as the result of that influence, is 
founded upon the idea that there is a Supreme Being 
who cares for men, who works in history, and who 
loves righteousness. In the doctrine of inspiration the 
Old Testament writers were really formulating and 
defending the richer and fuller doctrine of the imma- 
nent God. The Jews have been accused of worshipping 
an absentee God ; they have been accused of widening 
unnecessarily and even erroneously the breach between 
human and divine, between God and nature. There 
are traces of this, especially in the later literature, when 
they began to distrust the impulses of the present, and 
to rely solely upon an interpretation of the past. But 
in the golden age of the Hebrew religion, inspiration 
reached out in a healthful way to all men of all occupa- 
tions, and even nature was insfinct with the spirit of 
God, and sympathized deeply with man's moods and 



FOR THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. ?$ 

aspirations. In their doctrine of inspiration the Old 
Testament writers had hold of the essential truth that 
God lives and moves and has his being in man, and 
to a less extent in nature. For nature, too, is instinct 
with the divine life. It is a revelation of God, and it 
is inspired of God. 

But it is the idea of God in man, the spirit of God 
in the human heart, that the Old Testament emphasizes. 
And the New Testament, with its story of the incarna- 
tion and of the Holy Spirit in the Church, is but carry- 
ing on to perfection the thought of an immanent and 
transcendent God ; and it is this idea which we find to 
have been the basis of the Old Testament doctrine of 
inspiration. 



CHAPTER IV. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR A VALID 
PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE. 






"• The subject with which we have now to deal is that of the so-called l proof of 

the existence of God. 1 These proofs have been variously estimated at different 

times. At the present day they have fallen very greatly out of favor ; it is said 

that they are unnecessary, since they would never produce the belief in God 

where it did not exist already 11 

Pfleiderer. 



CHAPTER IV. 

BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR A VALID PROOF 
OF god's EXISTENCE. 

i. It has been suggested by many scholars that in 
our efforts to prove the existence of God, we are but 
reproducing in our own minds the history of the pro- 
cess whereby the race came to a knowledge of the 
Supreme Being. This view, when properly formulated 
and defended, has much to commend it. Prof. J. Caird, 
in his "Philosophy of Religion/' after he has passed 
adverse criticism upon some of the more material argu- 
ments, and moved on to that which to him seems spirit- 
ual, rational, and valid, returns to point out that in the 
light of the higher truth it becomes evident that the 
more nai've and childlike arguments were also founded 
upon truth. And had not the higher proofs been valid, 
the race would never in its childhood have laid hold 
upon those which were physical and mechanical; men 
would never have had the perseverance nor the courage 
to have pushed their thoughts farther onwards, until 
they arrived at last at a spiritual monotheism. And 
the proof of the correctness of the step is to be found 
not alone in a priori reasoning, but in historical investi- 
gation. Says Pfleiderer, "What the proofs of the exist- 
ence of God really amount to is a retracing in thought 
of the way in which the human mind first rose to the 
consciousness of God, not in thought, but in an antici- 

79 



80 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

patory and pictorial fashion. If there is reason in 
human history at all, we may expect to find it in the 
history of religious thought ; and if it is a characteristic 
of reason to become conscious of itself, we may ven- 
ture to hope that what it has done immediately in 
history, it will be able to summon to consciousness in 
thought, so as to comprehend it as its own, that is to 
say, as rational and necessary." 1 

2. If the trend of these remarks is correct, then the 
Old Testament presents one of the strongest, if not 
the strongest, proof for the existence of God in all 
literature. At the first blush this seems to be a revo- 
lutionary statement ; for it has been very generally 
believed that the Old Testament is without argument, 
that it assumes everywhere the existence of God, and 
in fact, that the idea of God is given by specific reve- 
lation. The fact is, the existence of God is assumed. 
But the Hebrew method of developing the idea of God 
is peculiar. The method assumes the existence of a 
particular kind of God, and with this conception attacks 
the problem of existence. If the problem is solved, the 
God exists, otherwise there is something wrong in the 
assumption. When it was seen that a particular view 
of God did not solve the problem of individual sin or 
sorrow, or of national history, the Hebrews did not 
rush to the extreme of denying altogether the existence 
of a Supreme Being, but they enlarged their view of 
God. They tacitly admitted that their theology was at 
fault. And so, as time passed, the more complex prob- 
lems were attacked with a more humane, rational, and 
universal God, until at last the Hebrew idea of God 

1 Philosophy of Religion, vol. iii. p. 255. 



FOR A VALID PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE. 8 1 

became so world-wide, that by it all or nearly all the 
problems of history and human experience could be 
solved, and that, too, in a way at once more rational and 
more satisfactory than by any other means. 

3. Just when the Israelites began to worship Jahveh, 
and what his attributes were at the outset, it is now 
impossible to say. The testimony of both historians 
and prophets, however, goes to show that it was the 
events of the exodus that first brought to the knowl- 
edge of the people the full import of their religion. 
Whether Jahveh was worshipped by the Hebrew group 
prior to the exodus, and whether he was a deity native 
to the Hebrews, or adopted by them from a neighbor- 
ing tribe, cannot now be affirmed. At any rate, there is 
no evidence of great value that the religion of the 
Israelites was greatly different from that of neighbor- 
ing tribes prior to the time of Moses. But under the 
hand of Moses the national and political life underwent 
marked transformations. According to one tradition, 
the Israelites had not been worshipping Jahveh before 
his revelation to Moses. According to another tradi- 
tion, it was not the name, so much as it was the 
nature, of the national God which underwent changes at 
the hand of the great lawgiver. We are warranted in 
saying, in any case, that prior to Moses the religion of 
the people was tainted with various forms of tribal reli- 
gion, of idolatry, and even of totemism in its low forms. 
There was almost a total absence of ethical elements 
in the religion. The god or gods were not bound to 
the people, nor the people to them, by anything like 
a covenant or contract. Such seems to be the fact 
underlying the divergent traditions which have come 



82 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

down to us. If there were some before the time of 
Moses who had higher views than these, they had not 
made in his time any strong impression upon the people 
as a whole. 

To Moses the problem of the national existence pre- 
sents itself in such a way as to demand a complete 
transformation in the religious life. No nation" can be 
secure that is not bound to its deity by eternal and 
ethical relations. A nation to stand must be founded 
upon honesty, justice, and truth. This must be the 
relation of the members to one another. But if so, 
then they must commune with their God on the same 
broad, ethical basis. Moses saw, and rightly, that right- 
eousness exalteth a nation. And, as to the ancient 
civilizations, religion was the centre from which every- 
thing proceeded, the religion must be the revelation of 
a God who loves righteousness. 

How the Israelites came to make Jahveh their na- 
tional God it is impossible to say. Indeed, they them- 
selves could not explain it. They affirmed that they had 
not chosen Jahveh, but that he had chosen them, and that 
he had passed by stronger peoples in making his choice. 
However that may be, it was the Hebrew ethics that 
created the Hebrew religion ; and the Hebrew ethics 
arose from their keenly reflective and practical tenden- 
cies on the one hand, and from their deep religiousness 
on the other, — a religiousness which of itself, however, 
could love Baal and Chemosh with as much zest as it 
loved Jahveh. Jahveh, the national God, was a moral 
Being. The Baals were soft and sensual, and Chemosh 
was capricious and cruel. All love for them must in 
time prove disappointing. The Hebrew God who loved 



FOR A VALID PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE. 83 

righteousness could alone love his people with an 
eternal love. 

It was, I think, Moses as judge, prophet, and law- 
giver, who produced the ethical religion of the Old 
Testament. 

4. Let us look at Moses a moment as the leader and 
organizer of his people. It is with Moses that the his- 
tory of Israel begins. The Book of Genesis closes with 
a single Israelitish family. These in the beginning of 
the Book of Exodus have become a great horde. But 
they are, as yet, by no means a nation. They have no 
leader, no definite aims and purposes. Their religious 
life is in a condition as discouraged as that of their 
political life. As a semi-civilized people on the border 
of a great nation, maintained there perhaps to shield 
Egypt from still more barbarous hordes beyond, they 
begin to be enslaved. This arouses them to a sense of 
their rights. Moses, who has had objective prepara- 
tion, perhaps, in a life among the Egyptian nobles, and 
subjective preparation by a quiet residence in the land 
of Midian, comes forward as the leader of his people. 
"He was the soul of the conspiracy which preceded the 
exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. The whole enter- 
prise was conducted by him in conjunction with other 
men. In the desert, too, in the attempt to penetrate 
into the south, and during the stay in the trans-Jor- 
danic districts, he stood at the head of the tribes. He 
came forward and was revered as the envoy and repre- 
sentative of the Deity. In judicial proceedings his 
sentence was final." 1 By slow degrees, and as much as 
was possible in a lifetime, the people during their wan- 

1 Kuenen's Religion of Israel, i. 274. 



84 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

derings were fused into one. " The eamp was, so to 
speak, at once the cradle in which the nation was 
nursed, and the smithy in which it was welded into 
unity ; it was also the primitive sanctuary." x Under 
the hand of Moses as leader and organizer, the Israel- 
itish nation began. The story ran that the Hebrews 
wished permission to leave Egypt and go into the wil- 
derness to worship their God. Whatever value this 
may have, it is certain that Jahveh was believed to 
have his abode in one of the peaks of the desert, and 
it is equally certain that " it was out of the religion of 
Israel that the commonwealth of Israel unfolded itself." 
Moses did not create the national God, but a firm belief 
in his power made Moses 1 work possible. The later 
prophets, no doubt, purified the idea, and gave greater 
definiteness to the national character. But they did 
not create these ; on the contrary, these made them. 2 

5. As judge and prophet, Moses is a conspicuous 
character. According to Kuenen, Moses labored more 
in this capacity than in that of lawgiver. The people 
came to him with their differences, and he decided their 
disputes. It was believed that he did this on principles 
of justice and equity. 3 Schultz 4 thinks that Moses' con- 
science had not been prepared for this work " by study 
or learning, but by the direct illumination of divine cer- 
tainty." He credits, as against the priests, the story of 
Num. xii., and sees in Moses also a true prophet, who 
not only decided matters of dispute among his people, 
but exhorted them to settle their own differences, and 
inspired them with warm and eloquent words of reli- 

1 Wellhausen's History of Israel, 434. 3 Kuenen, op. cit. 275. 

2 Wellhausen, op. cit. 432. 4 O. T. Theol., vol.i. 130, I. 



FOR A VALID PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE, 85 

gious insight. According to Wellhausen, 1 Moses, by 
these daily or weekly decisions, "laid a firm basis for a 
consuetudinary law and became the originator of the 
Torah in Israel. In doing this he succeeded in inspir- 
ing the national being with that which was the very life 
of his own soul ; through the Torah he gave a definite, 
positive expression to their sense of nationality and 
their idea of God." To these three illustrious scholars, 
then, Moses is not merely a judge whose task it is to 
decide a case on its merits, or according to the law and 
the testimony. He is also a teacher and a preacher of 
religion and of morality ; or as the Biblical author would 
put it, combining the two ideas in one, a preacher of 
righteousness. 

6. Moses' work as lawgiver is certainly not especially 
emphasized in the older documents. Yet Kuenen 2 is 
doubtless right in saying that " the collections of laws 
which were formed at various periods of Israel's history 
were fearlessly embellished with his name, because it 
was known that he had laid the foundations of all 
legislation." 

The religious and moral works of Moses, as it seems 
to me, were herculean. He did not create the Hebrew 
religion, but he reformed it and gave it an impetus and 
an authority that it had never possessed. He was not 
the first to promulgate a pure system of morals ; but he 
was the first to connect such a system with its proper 
Author, and derive from the connection an ethical reli- 
gion purer than any then known. Jahveh was not to 
Moses the only God, he was not the God of the uni- 
verse. But he was the God of Israel. " For Moses to 

1 Hist. 434, 6, 8. 2 Op. cit. 273. 



86 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

have given to the Israelites 'an enlightened conception 
of God ' would have been to have given them a stone 
instead of bread. . . . The so-called ' particularism ' of 
Israel's idea of God was in fact the real strength of Is- 
rael's religion : it thus escaped from barren mytholo- 
gizings, and became free to apply itself to moral 
tasks. . . . As God of the nation, Jahveh became the 
God of justice and of right ; as God of justice and right, 
he came to be thought of as the highest, and at last as 
the only power in heaven and earth." 1 These remark- 
able words of Wellhausen are but a reaffirmation of 
earlier words of Kuenen, equally significant : " The 
great merit of Moses," says he, "lies in the fact that 
he connected the religious idea with the moral life. 
Jahveh comes before his people with moral demands 
and commandments : this is the starting-point of Is- 
rael's rich religious development, the germ of those 
glorious truths which were to ripen in the course of 
centuries." 2 

Moses was, in the best sense of the word, inspired. 
His soul was on fire with a love for Jahveh, for his 
people, and for the truth. That Professor Schultz should 
believe Moses inspired is a matter of course. But that 
Wellhausen, whom a recent number of an important 
religious magazine calls a polytheist, should make such 
a claim may seem startling. Says he, " One whom the 
wind and sea obeyed had given him his aid. Behind 
him stood One higher than he, whose spirit wrought in 
him and whose arm wrought for him." 3 

I have burdened my chapter with quotations. But it 
has been done in order to show the most conservative 

1 Wellhausen, 437, 8. 2 Op. cit. 282. 3 Op. cit. 433. 



FOR A VALID PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE, 87 

and timid reader that critics whose names they fear are 
truly religious and reverent, and that really the work of 
Moses is, on any hypothesis, truly marvellous and 
assuredly divine. 

7. In the Song of Deborah, which is usually believed 
to be older than any of the documents referring to 
Moses which have come down to us, we have some 
interesting lines bearing upon the nature ascribed to 
the Hebrew Deity during the period of the Judges. 1 

This old song may have been derived by the author 
of Judges from that old book, several times quoted and 
referred to in the Old Testament, called the " Book of 
the Wars of Jahveh." At any rate, the war of which it 
speaks was a religious war. According to the primitive 
notion, often expressed, Jahveh is a local and national 
Deity. He is not equally present in all places at all 
times. He must come up from his mountain home in 
the south to help his people. And at his coming the 
mountains quaked. 

" The earth trembled, the heavens also dropped, 
Yea, the clouds dropped water.' ' 2 

Jahveh, then, here, is a God whose voice is the 
thunder, whose bow is the iris, whose arrows are 
the thunderbolts, and whose chariot is the dark, 
fire-girt, rain-bearing cloud. Surely such a God, 
inhabiting the lightning-clad peaks of the south, was in 
very truth a consuming fire. For him the stars that 
" fought in their courses " for Israel on that day were 

1 Professor Cornill in his Einleitung thinks Judges v. historic and from 
a contemporary. See also Driver's Introduction, p. 338. 

2 Judges v. 4. 



88 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

fitting messengers. For him to " be as the sun when 
he goeth forth in his might " was a glorious ideal. But 
there was something more than a mere nature Deity 
in this Jahveh, whose attributes allied him so closely 
with the elements. He was a God who not only took 
the trouble to come from Sinai x to help his people, but 
he dealt with them faithfully and justly while helping 
them. His rule was not arbitrary nor capricious. He 
never made a promise and failed to keep it. He never 
inspired a hope that he might torture it and crush it. 
Never in all the Old Testament do the Hebrews accuse, 
or see any reason to accuse, their God of being a God 
who does not keep his promises. It is they, and not 
Jahveh, who are covenant-breakers. From the dawn to 
the close of Israelitish history, there is but one strain ; 
and our poet has given it worthy expression in the 
lines : — 

" Tell of it, ye that ride on white asses, 
Ye that sit on rich carpets, 
And ye that walk by the way, 

Far from the noise of archers in the place of drawing water 
There shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord, 
Even the righteous acts of his rule in Israel." 

Righteous acts, of course, did not mean then what 
they do now. There has been progress in " righteous- 
nesses/' just as there has been progress in " rich car- 
pets." Jahveh was righteous at the outset, only to the 
extent that he would keep his offensive and defensive 
contract with Israel. But this is sufficient. A con- 
tract implies truthfulness and justice in some one thing 
at least. But this contract was a growing contract, 

1 Judges v. 5. 



FOR A VALID PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE. 89 

constantly including more elements, until at length 
Israel and Jahveh must pursue consistent policies, or 
all intercourse between them will be impossible. They 
must both (and this is said for Israel only) be just and 
truthful in sight and out of sight, or they cannot walk 
together. As Sir H. Maine has somewhere suggested, 
we have a whole moral code implicit in the first con- 
tract. The righteousnesses mentioned in Judges v. are 
a valuable beginning. And the Song shows a strong 
tendency to laud the faithfulness of the people and 
their leaders, as well as the righteous acts of Jahveh. 
The poem begins with a paean in praise of the leaders 
and the people. These were wars of Jahveh, in which 
the leaders led and the people made free-will offerings 
of their own bodies. Such confidence in the justice of 
their cause merited the divine favor. 

8. Neither in the Ten Commandments nor in the 
early histories do the Israelites give proof of mono- 
theism. Some of them believe that Jahveh is not only a 
better God for them than any other, but that he is really 
superior to all other gods ; but the masses, to a com- 
paratively late day, believed, as did the author of Judges 
xi., that Jahveh was the God only of Palestine and of 
the Israelites. When David is driven out of Palestine, 
he says he is driven away from God. When Naaman 
expresses a wish to become a worshipper of Jahveh, 
whose prophet has cured him of his disease, he is told 
that he must take some of Jahveh's earth to Syria with 
him, and so worship Jahveh on his own soil. 

The prophet soon saw that such a God could not 
command the allegiance and respect of a thoughtful 
man. It is seen that, if God is truly God, he must 



90 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

make the world and its history an intelligible whole by 
exercising control over every part of the same. With 
this problem Amos and especially Isaiah wrestled, and 
their thought at last finds definite expression in Deuter- 
onomy, 2 Isaiah, and the Priest Code. God is the Crea- 
tor and Lord of the whole earth. Nothing happens that 
he has not accomplished. No nation rises, no nation 
falls, but by his order and permission. Thus it is that 
history for the Hebrews has a purpose and meaning. 
Nations, like individuals, have missions. And the 
doctrine of the One God gives unity to all their 
thought. It reduces the tohu and bohu of chaos to a 
cosmos of beauty and truth. 

9. At the outset, too, in the Israelitish religion, 
Jahveh's form was conceived in a more or less crude 
manner. The golden calf made by Aaron was, as the 
people believed, an image of their God. In the north- 
ern kingdom in the time of Hosea, as that prophet 
clearly implies, Jahveh was also worshipped in the form 
of a bull. 1 Later than this the Hebrew writings of the 
southern kingdom are still more or less hampered by 
anthropomorphisms, and these could not originally 
have been mere figures of speech. But it was finally 
seen that only a God who was a spirit, and not flesh, 
could be the God of the universe. It was a spiritual, 
and not a purely formal, nor a merely physical, control 
that God exercised over the world. 

10. But it was on the moral side that the prophets 
had their severest struggles with the people. The 
moral argument for the existence of God was one that 

1 In Isa. i. 24 the Hebrew consonants read "bull " instead of " Holy 
One." 



FOR A VALID PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE, 9 1 

had to maintain itself by a constant and internecine 
struggle. Theoretical atheism was in early times a 
thing unknown. But practical atheism was common ; 
that is, man could not or would not follow the moral 
argument of the prophets, which led by conclusive logic 
to a God who was at once spiritual and moral, and in- 
terested in the welfare of men. The people said, gods 
are for the purpose of getting us out of our scrapes. 
We may chastise our teraphim, but our God may not 
chastise us. If he can save us at all, he can save us 
without punishing us. And if so, why does he need to 
punish us ? If we keep his worship going, if we are 
ready in season and out of season with sacrifices and 
offerings, feast days and vows, are we not faithful 
to our covenant ? So the people argued with Amos. 
When he began to urge them to righteousness, and pro- 
claimed that the day of Jahveh was near, they affirmed 
that they knew it as well as he. But they affirmed that 
it could not be other than a day of victory, joy, and 
thanksgiving. Jahveh was their covenant God, he 
could not throw them over ; and if he did, it would be 
his own loss, for he would then have no worshippers, 
and would be banished from the number of the gods. 
Against all this Amos cries out in holy indignation. 
He lets them know that he cannot and will not believe 
in any such a God. That God who brought them out of 
Egypt was, in fact, no such God. Not less important 
than the work of Moses, was the work of Amos in de- 
stroying the old notion of the Deity. His sublime 
words which have come down to us, still have a message. 
He says, " You only have I known of all the families : 
therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities/' * 

1 Amos iii. 2. 



92 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

What a victory for truth this was ! In the popular 
theology, religion and ethics, rewards and punishments, 
were not correlatives, but were wholly distinct, and 
they affirmed the existence of the former, but denied 
the latter. It was a new and powerful argument for 
the existence of God when it was affirmed that he must 
rule the world in justice and truth, meting out to all 
the rewards and punishments which in the nature of 
things they had brought down upon their own heads. 

ii. After it became an accepted belief that there is 
but one God who is a spirit, or as the Old Testament 
prefers to say, who has a spirit, there arose a form of 
scepticism which said that if this is so, then God as 
spirit cannot interfere at all in human affairs. "Jah- 
veh," said they, " will not do good, neither will he do 
evil." 1 This could only be met by the counter affir- 
mation that God's control over the world, and over 
human history, is spiritual and moral rather then phys- 
ical and mechanical. And especially were the pious 
Jews fond of affirming, that in human affairs Jahveh 
ruled through the media of the great prophets, poets, 
and sages, who were his servants and messengers. 

12. If God is a spirit, and rules the world as a spirit, 
he must seem to rule it through his agents. So then, 
along with the idea of the spirituality of God, went 
also a new and higher conception of freedom and re- 
sponsibility. Isaiah, in his sixth chapter, is free to 
accept or reject the divine call. But if he accepts it, 
he consciously accepts also all its responsibilities. 
Even more spiritually conceived is Jeremiah's account 
of his call. The divine will was already before his 

i Zeph. i. 12. 



FOR A VALID PROOF OF GOD >S EXISTENCE. 93 

birth preparing him for his work. Yet it is not his 
work till he himself chooses it. When a prophet has 
chosen his work he is under obligation to carry it on to 
completion. If his hand slacks, he robs God. If he 
fails to tell the whole truth of God, he is responsible 
for the death of his people. It is Ezekiel who carries 
this thought to its highest development. And for him 
this doctrine of mutual responsibility applies to all 
men, and not to the prophets alone. 

13. It is in the Hebrew conception of " God in his- 
tory," that we find one of the strongest evidences of 
the grandeur and truthfulness of their thought of God. 
To human eyes it appeared in 711 or in 701, that Jeru- 
salem must follow in the steps of Samaria and go into 
captivity. Micah had, without " if " or " and," predicted 
just such a result. The first three chapters of his 
book give the evidence for this ; and if the earlier 
prophets were right in saying that Jahveh must visit 
upon his people all their iniquities, seemingly Micah 
was right in prophesying as he did. Over against 
Micah's preaching stood Isaiah's. Isaiah saw that the 
Hebrew religion was tied up in the Hebrew history, as 
did all the prophets. But he also saw that this religion 
was of God, that it had permanent, even if as yet un- 
developed, qualities, and as a consequence could not 
come to a dead stop at this time. If there is any God 
at all, if history means anything, the nation cannot 
come to an end now. The people have but half learned 
the lessons God is teaching. The school must not 
stop now. If it does, all that we have gained is lost. 
Isaiah saw that the very existence of the Divine Being 
demanded a lease of life to the nation, and his doctrine 



94 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

carried the day. Sennacherib, as his own inscriptions 
tell us, "shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage." But 
he did not take his city, he did not desecrate the altar 
of the true God. No doubt Isaiah was helped in his 
cause by the more pessimistic Micah, who threatened 
unconditional and immediate overthrow. 1 Had the 
people not believed Micah they could scarce have 
obeyed Isaiah. Yet it was Isaiah who saw most deeply 
into the ways -of the spirit. The facts were on Isaiah's 
side, and showed that his idea of the divine and loving 
purpose in history was the correct one. 

14. To give a complete history of the doctrine of 
God as it is developed in the Old Testament would be 
to write an entire Old Testament theology. Some of 
the lines here started are further developed in other 
chapters of this book, others must be omitted. But 
enough has been said to show that the Hebrews started 
with a purely idolatrous conception of the Deity, and 
that they rose to spiritual monotheism by dint of their 
own thinking, living, and working, under the conscious 
direction of God. Every new and higher view of the 
divine nature gained by the nation, cost the nation the 
life-work of a prophet or sage or poet. It was a long 
and hard struggle. And every attribute of the Deity, 
which we to-day accept as a matter of course, in the 
past cost a Hebrew saint his life-blood. It is this 
dramatic story of the development of Hebrew theology 
which makes the Old Testament, when read aright, an 
unanswerable argument in favor of God's existence, 
an argument which is still valid to-day, and is fast 

1 That Micah should be so interpreted appears from a comparison of 
Mic. iii. 12 with Jer. xxvi. 18, 19, 



FOR A VALID PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE. 95 

becoming the basis of the new Christian Apolegetics. 
By no means, then, are we to look upon the Biblical 
religion as " a mere episode on a side-track of evolu- 
tion." The Bible is the history of the evolution of 
religion. We find in the Bible the lowest beginnings, 
and we reach there the loftiest heights. " It is difficult 
for us to-day to understand how low was the popular 
conception of the character of God entertained by the 
Hebrew people at the beginning of their national 
career." 1 And on the other hand, that picture of the 
character of God which is furnished by some of the 
Psalms, by Job and 2 Isaiah, is still a long way ahead 
of the comprehension of most of us. 

1 Sunderland's Bible: Its Origin, Growth, and Character, p. 209. The 
whole chapter is admirable. 



CHAPTER V. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR A NEW 
CONCEPTTON OF THE MESSIAH. 



" We have in the Messianic prophecy of the Old Testament an organic sys- 
tem constantly advancing on the original lines, and expanding into new and 
more comprehensive phases with the progress of the centuries. Vast and com- 
plex that organism is, — so complex that the wisest sages of Israel could not 
comprehend it." 

C A. Briggs. 



CHAPTER V. 

BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR A NEW 
CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. 

I. An idea which has dominated too exclusively the 
Biblical study of the past is that which finds expression 
in the majority of the works on Messianic prophecy. 
It is assumed that the chief value of the Old Testa- 
ment lies in its Christology, which by many writers 
has been developed into a complete and harmonious 
system, a system built entirely upon the supposed New 
Testament fulfilment of the very letter of the Hebrew 
Scriptures. Now, it goes without saying, that those 
who see in the Old Testament only a book of Messianic 
prophecy are its worst and most one-sided defenders. 
One can say with all reverence that he who runs to 
Paul or to the Gospels with every difficult passage in 
the Old Testament will never understand that wonder- 
ful book. If we would get unbiassed results we must 
determine to know nothing but the Old Testament and 
its religion. Only as thus studied can we hope to come 
to the New Testament with fresh light. 

Further, an admission at the outset of the simple 
naturalness of Jewish Messianism in many of its mani- 
festations will help us. The Messianic hope in one 
sense is nothing more than that longing for the ideal 
which is present in all religions, which is still present 

99 



IOO BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

in Christianity in various forms, and which lends to 
our religion much of its motive and its charm. These 
ideals need not one, but many, fulfilments, in ever 
widening applications. They are conditioned by the 
Time-spirit, and in time create the Time-spirit of 
the future. Not always, to the best of her servants 
even, does the Time-spirit reveal all her plans, and so 
we must expect to find in the loftiest of religions many 
broken ideals and unfulfilled prophecies ; and alongside 
these the oracles of many who builded wiser than they 
knew, and formed an ideal that neither they nor their 
fellows knew the meaning of. 

2. The Messianic hope of the ancient Hebrews had 
rude enough beginnings. We seem to meet it first in 
popular conceptions of a "day of Jahveh," near at hand, 
in which the national God would come from his home 
in the south and fight for his people, giving them a 
glorious victory over their enemies. 1 This would be 
followed by peace and prosperity. All would be light, 
joy, and gladness. 2 In the first writing prophets, this 
hope already centres in the ruling king, as the victori- 
ous chief who at once upholds the nation, and the reli- 
gion of Jahveh. While moral elements were wanting 
in the popular ideas of the early age, they were plainly 
conspicuous in the writings of the prophets, and in the 
prophetic redactions of the history books. 

Amos affirms that the Messianic age will be, not an 
age of bloody victory and sensuous delight, but an age 
of uprightness and truthfulness under the reign of a 

1 Judg. viii. 22 fol. I Sam. viii. 5-8; x. 18 cannot be cited for the early 
view. These passages are all later than Solomon; but see Piepenbring, 
O. T. Theol., 218. 2 Judg. v. 4, 5; Amos v. 14, 18-20. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. IOI 

Davidic king who will rule in righteousness, and judge 
the people with equity. 1 

Hosea adds out of his own domestic experience a 
new note to the religion, that of tender love. He 
looks not only for righteousness and judgment, but for 
loving kindness and mercy. All this is to come about 
by seeking "Jahveh their God, and David their king." 2 
This king is not David himself, but the Davidic dy- 
nasty which reigned at Jerusalem, while at Samaria 
there reigned, according to Hosea, an usurper. Thus 
the northern king, Jeroboam II., was not Jahveh's 
Anointed, i.e., the Messiah or Christ, while the south- 
ern king, Ahaz, who was in the line of David, was the 
Anointed of the Lord. 

Isaiah carries this idea much farther. He sees a 
king to be enthroned in the near future who will estab- 
lish the Davidic dynasty forever. The name of the son 
of David who shall bring this about is " Subtle Counsel- 
lor, Divine Warrior, Possessor of the Spoils, and Prince 
of Peace." 3 None but human attributes are given to 
this prince. It is the dynasty, not the individual king, 
that is to endure forever, and the rendering " Mighty 
God " in Revised Version is too strong. The word 
" God " was, in fact, used very loosely by ancient 
peoples. 

This king, who is perhaps Hezekiah himself, is still 
further idealized in xi. 1-5. "The spirit of Jahveh 
shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and under- 
standing, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of 

1 Amos ix. 11, 12, are troublesome. If not post-exilian, the reference 
is to the restoration of the Davidic dynasty in North Israel. 

2 Hos. iii. 5. 3 Isa. ix. 6, 7. 



102 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

knowledge, and the fear of Jahveh." Already, as early 
as Isaiah, then, the Messianic king is given the qualities 
of the judge, prophet, and civil ruler. 1 

Micah affirms in v. 2, 3, that the hope of the people 
centres in their king. This king comes of an old and 
tried family, his " goings forth are from everlasting/' 
In the first place, it is noteworthy that in accordance 
with Hebrew custom, it is the " house " here, and not the 
individual, whose age is so great ; and secondly the word 
" everlasting " is used merely in the sense of "very 
old." The Moabite stone, for example (800 B.C.), says 
that the tribe of Dan had lived always in the land along 
the eastern banks of the Jordan. This we know was 
not true. If, instead of " Bethlehem Ephrathah " in 
Mic. v. 2, we read with most modern scholars, " house of 
Ephrathah," we have removed the passage out of which 
grew the later opinion that Messiah must be born in 
Bethlehem. 2 In any case, Micah has in mind nothing 
more than a Davidic king, who will, by a just and 
strong reign, secure victory, peace, and prosperity for 
the people. 

3. Jeremiah follows in the tracks of his predecessors, 
and looks unto David for a righteous branch who will 
usher in the golden era. 3 He also places beside the 
king an everlasting priesthood (xxxiii. 18). Formerly 
Jeremiah was believed to declare also the divinity, and 
even the Deity, of the Messiah by the name " Jahveh 
our righteousness ; " and as the name stands it is further 
suggestive of vicarious atonement. But the name as 

1 Prof. Toy, in Judaism and Christianity, p. 50 note, advocates the view 
that this section is, like chapters xxiv.-xxvii., later than our prophet Isaiah. 

2 Matt. ii. 6. 8 See, however, Giesebrecht's Commentar. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. 103 

thus written is contrary to Hebrew syntax. King Joram 
was not " the Lord most high," but his name affirms that 
" Jahveh is most high." So Joel was not himself " Jah- 
veh God," but his name tells us that " Jahveh is God." 
In like manner the name Isaiah gave to the unknown 
child was Immanuel, " God is with us." And Jeremiah 
simply means to affirm that the name of their ideal 
king will declare that " Jahveh is our righteousness." 1 
Ezek. xvii. 22-24 * s difficult, but most scholars see 
in this a reference to the restoration of the direct Davi- 
dic line to the throne. In xxi. 27, Ezekiel is doubtful 
about the how and when, but confident that the kingdom 
will be at last restored to him whose right it is (Shilok), 
the Hebrew confirming the third marginal reading of the 
Revised Version of Gen. xlix. 10. In xxxiv. 23, Ezekiel 
expects the restoration of the Davidic dynasty, and the 
new king shall " feed the people and be their shepherd." 
The new turn which the ideal has taken was suggested 
by Isaiah and others. But it is narrower than the con- 
ception which they possessed, no doubt because the 
king could hope to be but a vicegerent or Pekah of the 
Assyrian king. His functions would be religious and 
educational rather than governmental. Yet Ezekiel 
has no idea of renouncing the old Messianic hope. 2 
Israel shall dwell in the land given unto Jacob, " they 
and their children and their children's children for- 

1 Some of the older commentators held that Isa. ix. 6 should be trans- 
lated in the same way. The name would then be, "A wonderful counsel- 
lor is the Mighty God, an everlasting Father, a Prince of peace." This 
would be a very long name, but not longer than that borne by some of the 
Assyrian kings. 

2 B. Stade says Ezekiel did renounce this hope in chapters xl.-xlviii., 
where the ruler is called a " prince, " not a " king " or " anointed." 



104 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

ever ; and David my servant shall be their prince for- 
ever " (xxxvii. 25). Here, as in other similar passages, 
" David" means the dynasty established by him. The 
reference is not to an individual king who shall reign 
forever, for there were to be several of these (xlv. 8, 9). 
Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel add, as a condition of mem- 
bership in the Messianic kingdom, the possession of 
a new heart, upon which the law of God is written. 

Zech. ix.-xi. is a peculiar section. It is, perhaps, a 
discourse of one of the oldest of the prophets edited by 
one of the latest. According to ix. 10-16, God is him- 
self the Redeemer and Saviour of Israel. And the 
language implies that the writer had no thought of an 
individual Messiah. 1 On the other hand, ix. 9 seems 
to refer to a king after the manner of the pre-exilian 
prophets. 

4. Under the hand of 2 Isaiah, the Messianic hope 
has completely changed. The national independence 
has been lost. The cream of the people are in exile. 
The line of David is no longer in a position to offer a 
basis for the prophetic hope. But the great unknown 
prophet is not disheartened. Those gifts and graces 
which his predecessors bestowed upon David, he trans- 
fers to the people. 2 For the time being, at any rate, 
Cyrus, king of Persia, is the Messiah, the Christ. He 
is even called Jahveh's shepherd, who shall perform all 
his pleasure. Through him Jerusalem shall be rebuilt 
and the temple restored. 3 The Babylonian Isaiah, how- 
ever, is himself not averse to living apart from his 
native land. Indeed, there are certain gains to be had 

1 See also Zech. xii. 4-8; xiii. i, where the country people save Judah. 

2 Isa. lv. 3 vs. Acts xiii. 34. 8 Isa. xliv. 28; xlv. 1-4. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. 105 

only in exile. Jahveh is now the sanctuary, and the 
blood of slain beasts no longer flows — in vain. 

The Davidic king is entirely wanting in the exilian 
sections, Isa. xiii., xiv., and xxiv.-xxvi., as also in Zepha- 
niah, Habakkuk, and some of the other prophets. To 
say with Schultz, "hence the religious hope is not 
bound up in a particular person/' is to explain but half 
the fact. The truth is, the Messianic hope was the out- 
growth, as was all prophecy, of the ideas of the times. 
A few years under the rule of a son of David would 
give rise to expectations for the future wholly irrecon- 
cilable with others that would arise, and did arise, on 
foreign soil during the exile, and in Palestine during 
the rule of the high priests. 

5. The prophets of the return once more look to the 
house of David for the pledge of the divine favor. 
Haggai calls upon Zerubbabel in the name of Jahveh to 
be strong. He has been chosen of God for a divine 
work, and made " as a signet." * Zechariah follows 
in the tracks of his contemporary. Zerubbabel is the 
branch. Before him the great mountain shall become a 
plain, " not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, 2 
saith Jahveh." Both these prophets place the high 
priest alongside the Messianic prince as a man second 
only in importance to him. But there is no hint as yet 
that the Messiah is to be himself a priest. 

Malachi saw nothing in the Davidic princes to inspire 
hope, and therefore forsakes entirely the notion that 

1 Hag. ii. 21-25. 

2 Zech. iii. 8; iv. 6, 7. In vi. 11, 12, Joshua is called the Branch. 
Ewald said supply " and Zerubbabel." Smend, A. T. Rel. Geschichte 
S. 343 n., follows Welthausen's Skizzen V. S. 176, and cuts out "Joshua " 
as a later priestly emendation, and substitutes " Zerubbabel.' ' 



106 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the house of David is to bring back to the people their 
lost estate. Neither does he return to the idea of the 
2 Isaiah, but introduces an entirely new conception. 
And he unites with it the common, though ever chan- 
ging, beliefs regarding the day of Jahveh. This was a 
most troublesome phenomenon in Hebrew thought. 
When it was near, they desired to have it put off. 
When it seemed far away in the future, they desired to 
have it near. This was due to ethical considerations. 
The day of Jahveh was a day of judgment. If it 
seemed near when Israel was plunged deeply into sin, 
it meant punishment and ruin. If it seemed far away 
in an age when the people were obedient and prosper- 
ous, it meant, perchance, a time of backsliding before 
the final arrival. Only a deus ex machina can unravel 
the tangle and usher in the denouement. There must be 
a specially provided messenger, who shall prepare the 
people for the new age and at once usher it in. Mala- 
chi had at hand a Biblical character whose peculiar 
demise fitted him for this new role. Elijah must be 
the forerunner, not of the Messiah, but of Jahveh him- 
self. 1 There is a difference of opinion whether Malachi 
had in mind a purely human messenger, or an angelic 
being. It is very likely that no clear distinctions were 
made between the two. 

Joel reminds one of Malachi in his use of the day of 
Jahveh ; but he ushers this in with a locust plague, and 
the blessing of the Messianic age is the result of a 
universal outpouring of the Spirit by God himself. 

6. Daniel (165 B.C.) and the Apocrypha do not 
mention a Davidic king, at least not in undisputed 

1 Mai. iii. 1; iv. 4-6. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. 107 

passages. The Book of Daniel is apocalyptic, ana many 
of its sentences are no longer intelligible. Possibly the 
stone cut out of the mountain without hands was the 
family of the Maccabees, and the kingdom which was 
about to be set up, and which would endure forever, was 
the restored kingdom of David. But the whole descrip- 
tion is so abundant in the supernatural, that many mod- 
ern critics believe that Daniel had in mind an angel 
prince, uncreated or pre-existent, and so " cut out with- 
out hands" (ii. 44, 45). The "son of man" in vii. 13 is 
now very generally interpreted of a people and not of 
an individual, because by the various beasts in the pre- 
ceding part of the chapter nations are meant. Natu- 
rally, then, here also we would suppose that it is the 
chosen people whose " dominion is an everlasting 
dominion which shall not pass away." Prof. Toy 
makes bold to say that we have in Daniel not an in- 
dividual Messiah, but a triumphant people. 1 And 
Schiirer says, " the core of Daniel's Messianic hope is 
the universal dominion of the saints." 2 

According to Baruch iv. 22 (150 B.C.) the Everlast- 
ing is the source of joy and salvation. He is even 
called "our Saviour." Tobit xiii. 10 (150 B.C.) calls the 
Lord "the everlasting King." The Messianic bless- 
ings are described, but these are conferred by God 
himself. 1 Mace. ii. 57 seems to contradict the pas- 
sages already cited, in that it says that " David pos- 
sessed the throne of an everlasting kingdom." This, 
however, need not mean necessarily anything more 
than a very long dynasty. Wendt is probably right in 
saying that the reference is to the past and not to the 

1 Judaism and Christianity, p 64. 2 Dan. ii. 44; vii. 14. 



108 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

future. So, too, the statement in Ecclus. xlvii. 1 1 that 
the dynasty of David is of everlasting duration may 
mean nothing more than that it was of long duration. 1 

7. The idea that the Messiah was to be a priest was 
not hinted at among the prophets. The pre-exilian 
prophets, in fact, paid little attention to either " priest- 
hood or public worship." To be sure, Ezekiel's Mes- 
siah in the ideal section, chaps, xl.-xlviii., maintains 
the sacrifices of the temple from his own private re- 
sources ; but he is not himself a priest, he is merely the 
civil ruler of the returned exiles. Joel and 2 Zech- 
ariah, on the other hand, are very favorable to the 
priests. Neither knows anything of a Davidic ruler; 
and both seem to believe and teach that the prophets as 
a class will become extinct, their place being taken by 
the priests and elders. But they do not mention an in- 
dividual Messiah. The One Hundred and Tenth Psalm, 
a production of the Maccabean era, presents us with 
the picture of a Davidic king who is also a priest. And 
this had its basis, no doubt, in the fact that the Mac- 
cabees were related to both the royal and priestly 
families. As our prophet Zechariah now reads, Joshua 
the high priest was named the Branch, and crowned 
with Messianic dignity. 2 If we suppose that Zechariah's 
text became illegible here, at a period when the idea 
of a Davidic king had waned, and the priests were 
in full power, the substitution of the name Joshua 
for that of Zerubbabel, which had fallen out, would 
be natural enough. While, therefore, the Hebrew 

1 For a different view of these passages see Schiirer's Jewish People in 
the Time of Christ, Div. II. vol. ii. pp. 138, 139. 

2 Zech. vi. 11, and above, p. 105, note 2. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. IO9 

Bible contained passages that easily lent themselves 
to the support of a priestly Messiah, the Jews never 
took up and developed the idea at all. And the 
priestly functions of the Messiah, as developed espe- 
cially in the book of Hebrews, were obviously for the 
purpose of showing that the ceremonial law was to 
come to an end in Jesus. 1 

8. The attributes which Isaiah gives to the Mes- 
sianic princes, which were also the attributes of the 
prophets, led many to interpret the " prophet like 
Moses" in Deut. xviii. 15, not of aline of prophets, nor 
of an individual prophet in the days of Josiah, but of 
the Messiah himself. By a free rendering of the lan- 
guage of Malachi, that prophet also might be quoted 
as referring to a Messiah who was to be a prophet. 
Various passages in the Apocrypha seem to build upon 
some such ideas as these. For example, the Wisdom 
of Sirach xlviii. 9, 10, recalls the story of Elijah's 
ascent into heaven, and then continues that he was 
"ordained for reproofs in their times . . . and to restore 
the tribes of Jacob." 1 Mac. xiv. 41 is very explicit, 
and says that Simon is to be high priest and governor 
forever (!) "until there should arise a faithful prophet." 
The Samaritans, who accepted only the Pentateuch, and 
rejected the remainder of the Old Testament, based 
their Messianic hope upon Deuteronony, and looked for 
a prophet, not a king. 

9. The canonization of the prophets and histories 
that followed or immediately preceded the Maccabean 
period greatly emphasized once more, in the schools of 
the scribes and among the people, the prophetic Mes- 

1 Stanton's Jewish and Christian Messiah, p. 129. 



IIO BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

sianic ideals. 1 In the third book of the Sibylline Ora- 
cles (126 B.C.) are two remarkable passages. Says the 
seer : — 

" Then shall God send a king from the sun, 2 who 
shall cause the whole earth to cease from wicked war, 
when he has slain some and exacted faithful oaths from 
others. Neither shall he do all these things of his own 
counsel, but in obedience to the beneficent decrees of 
the Most High." In the other passage, equally strik- 
ing, the oracle declares, "when Rome shall rule over 
Egypt also, uniting it under one yoke, then indeed the 
supreme kingdom of the King Immortal shall appear 
among men. And there shall come a pure king, to 
hold the sceptres of the whole earth for ever and ever 
as time rolls on." 

The Psalms of Solomon (40 b.c.) repeat all that is 
best in the great pre-exilian prophets regarding the 
Messiah. But while the prophets manifestly mean the 
dynasty, the Psalms of Solomon as clearly refer to an 
individual. And while the prophets have in mind a 
mere man in the line of David, the apocryphal Psalms 
give to the Messiah superhuman traits and character- 
istics, and seem to affirm at once his pre-existence and 
his immortality. 3 Ethically and religiously, the Mes- 

1 The title of the Hebrew Bible is " Law, Prophets, and Writings." The 
Law was made Holy Scripture about 440 B.C. The Prophets, including 
the histories, except Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and omitting Daniel, 
were made Holy Scripture about 200 B.C. The rest of the Old Testament, 
some of it not yet written, was canonized about the beginning of the 
second century of our era. 

2 Sibylline Oracles, III., lines 652 fol. Some read " east " instead of 
" sun," which is perhaps a mistranslation of DID in Mic. v. 2. 

8 See John vii. 27; xii. 34, which seem to reflect current Jewish thought. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH, III 

siah of these Psalms performs all the functions of the 
Messiah of Isaiah and Jeremiah. 

The Book of Enoch (ioo b.c. ?), quoted as Holy 
Scripture by our New Testament epistle of Jude, con- 
tains an elaborate and detailed picture of the future. 
The prophetic ideas are reproduced, though the intense 
moral and spiritual elements are lacking. Enoch has 
a personal righteous Messiah, who is reverenced as 
ruler and judge by the nations. The Messiah of the 
original Enoch is a man, and not the pre-existing Word, 
as the later Christian additions to the book describe 
him. This king is preceded by a deliverer, who was 
perhaps Judas Maccabeus (168-161) or John Hyrcanus 
(135-107 B.C.). And his work is conditioned by the 
return of the people to Jahveh their God. 

10. A marked distinction must often be made be- 
tween the original meaning of an Old Testament pas- 
sage and its meaning according to the interpretations 
of the scribes. The Second Psalm could hardly have 
been Messianic originally. It is merely a song in 
praise of some newly crowned king. But in the time 
of Christ, this Psalm was by many regarded as contain- 
ing an explicit reference to the Messiah, and it is so in- 
terpreted in the New Testament. 1 Psalm Forty-five 
is clearly a marriage song. The details of the cere- 
mony are idealized, to be sure, but nothing more than 
that is meant. The scribes saw in this at a later 
time, after the decay of their national life, something 
which fired their ambitions and fed the Messianic hope. 
Many of the Psalms, which probably at first had no 
Messianic reference, are given a distinct Messianic 

1 Heb.i. 5; v. 5. 



112 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

meaning in the Targums. 1 When these Psalms were 
no longer true of reigning kings of the Jews, the 
people began to understand them as referring to him 
who should come. 

Not only in the Targums, but in the Greek translation 
of the LXX., we find Psalms that affirm the pre-exis- 
tence and everlastingness of the Messiah. What in 
the Hebrew is affirmed of the dynasty of David, is in 
the Greek said of the individual Messiah. The Greek 
of Ps. lxxvii. 5 says the Messiah " existed before the 
moon, and will live as long as the sun." This view of 
Messiah seems to have been more or less common 
among the Jews of the first century before Christ. 2 

Isaiah's "king Immanuel ,, was clearly a contem- 
porary prince. The prophet, who was perhaps himself 
a member of the royal family, would naturally look to 
Hezekiah or some other king for a living example of 
an " anointed of Jahveh," who would be at once judge, 
prophet, and king. In the century preceding Christ, 
Isaiah's language began to have a meaning that had 
not yet been realized, and Isa. vii. is added to the list 
of Messianic prophecies. 3 

Scores of passages all through the Old Testament, 
that contained originally no hint of a Messiah, began 
to be narrowed down to predictions of the future, and 
were robbed of their original character. This scribal 
exegesis did not create new Messianic ideas, it was 
used rather to bolster up ideas already formed. Many 
of these were erroneous, most of them were selfish and 
materialistic, and, as a rule, they outraged the original 
intent of the Old Testament authors. 

1 Psalms ii., viii. , xvi., xx., xxi., xxii., xlv., lxxii., ex. 

2 Weber's Altsynagogale Theologie, S. 333. 3 Matt. i. 23. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. II3 

Gen. iii. 1 5, often called the " protevangelium," or first 
gospel, offers a case in point. The original merely as- 
serts the final victory of man over the beasts. The 
serpent of the chapter cannot be Satan, for the Jews 
did not yet believe in a Satan. The Palestinian 
Targum became the authority on which the early 
Church saw here a reference to the Messiah. The 
Targum adds at the close of the verse, " there will be a 
remedy in the days of king Messiah. ,, 

Likewise Gen. xlix. 10 is given in the Targum of 
Onkelos, " until the Messiah come whose is the king- 
dom. " And the later Targum of Jerusalem expands 
this into the following : " How beautiful is the King 
Messiah who springs from the house of Judah ! He 
girds his loins and descends and orders the battle 
against his enemies, and slays their kings and their 
chief captains ; there is no one so mighty as to stand 
before him. ,, These Targums were not written until 
after the time of Christ, but they often represent faith- 
fully ideas that were pre-Christian. And certainly many 
of them were accepted by the early Church in its for- 
mative period, and have more or less influenced Christian 
exegesis ever since. Not only has this occurred in the 
interpretation of various passages, but in the meanings 
attached to certain words. Such terms, for example, 
as " everlasting/* " anointed," " Elohim," and " Son of 
God," that were used very loosely at first, came to have 
a narrow, dogmatic meaning. The free and spontane- 
ous ideals of the early writers were hardened down 
into a lifeless system. 

n. Yet there was by no means unanimity of opinion 
in the days of Christ regarding the nature and work of 



114 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the Messiah. Each of the divergent ideas regarding 
the future age, which we have noticed, had its represen- 
tatives. There were those who looked for salvation 
only through the seed of David, which it was believed 
would restore the splendors of the fallen kingdom. 
This may be said to have been the orthodox idea, and 
it was ably championed by the scribes and Pharisees. 
This is the Messianic idea, properly so called. Others 
held to the idea, which seemed also to fit best their 
civil condition, that salvation would come through a 
priestly ruler. Since the loss of their national indepen- 
dence the Jews had really been a priestly kingdom, that 
is, the supreme ruler of their own blood was the high 
priest. Naturally, then, some of the Jews looked to 
the priest, rather than to the long since dethroned 
dynasty of the past. Others renounced both the fore- 
going ideas, and looked to Jahveh as alone their Saviour, 
who would announce his intentions to his people before- 
hand by means of some prophet, as Jeremiah or Elijah, 
messengers of his. 

Some of the most spiritual seem to have looked 
deeper into the facts of their religious experience, and 
to have seen the solidarity of existence, the necessity 
of religious leadership, and the possibility of hope and 
salvation through the sufferings of the righteous kernel 
of the people, and of one righteous servant of Jahveh 
in particular. 1 In the New Testament these various 
ideas regarding the future reappear in various forms 
and combinations. Several passages in the New Tes- 
tament look to " the prophet " for salvation, by which 

1 Strictly speaking, this was not a Messianic hope, that is, the suffering 
servant of the Second Isaiah was not Jahveh's "anointed." 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. 115 

they seem to mean " the prophet like Moses " of Deut. 
xviii. 15. 1 Others looked for the return of Elijah (or 
even Jeremiah 2 ), and were content with the thought 
that Elijah would prepare the way of Jahveh before him. 3 
Others combined this with the Messianic idea. Malachi, 
as we have seen, does not have a Messianic king, but a 
prophet who is the forerunner of God himself. The two 
passages which are combined in Mark i. 2, 3, give a pic- 
ture of the Messianic times which is nowhere paralleled 
in the Old Testament. According to Malachi, Jahveh 
says, "I send my messenger before my face who shall 
prepare my way before me." By Mark the possessives 
are changed, so that the meaning is that God will send 
his forerunner ahead of the Messiah, to prepare the 
Messiah's way before him. Two ideas of a wholly dif- 
ferent character are here combined. Nowhere in the 
Old Testament are forerunner and Messiah a part of 
the same conception. Those books which contain the 
one do not have the other. Many scholars conjecture, 
however, on the authority of Markix. 11, that the union 
of these two conceptions was not the work of the 
Christians, but of the Jewish thought of an earlier gener- 
ation. 4 Possibly, too, the alleged discrepancy between 
John's Gospel and the Synoptics as to whether the 
Baptist were really the expected forerunner, is dis- 
solved in the different views prevalent, as to the person 
for whom he was to prepare the way. A very curious 

1 Acts iii. 22; vii. 37. 2 Matt. xvi. 14. 

8 Matt. xvii. 10; Mark ix. 11 ; Luke iv. 18; ix. 8; John i. 21. 

* See Wendt's Teaching of Jesus, vol. i. p. 68. On the divergent 
Messianic expectations in the times of Christ, see also Cone's Gospel and 
its Earliest Interpretations, p. 38. 



Il6 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

notion seems to have been held by some, in which 
there were two Messiahs. One of these, a son of Jo- 
seph, was the Messiah of the ten tribes, whose mission it 
was to prepare the way for the other, who was called the 
Messiah ben David, and who seems to have been given 
the attributes and graces of the prophetic Messiah. 1 

Many of the details of the various Messianic expecta- 
tions are lost beyond recall. But, with Wendt, this 
much may be said, " there was an unwavering expecta- 
tion of a divinely purposed future dispensation of bless- 
ing. ,, Many of these hopes were fantastic. And there 
seem to be traces of some of them in our Gospels, 
but nothing so extreme as is to be found in current 
Jewish literature. For example, the Targums on Isa. 
ii. 2, and elsewhere, tell how nature will herself be trans- 
formed in the Messianic time. Corn-stalks like palm- 
trees will bear kernels as large as one's head, which 
will be harvested by the wind. There will grow single 
grapes large enough to fill a wagon, and from which 
wine may be drawn as from a cask. Sinai, Tabor, and 
Carmel will be united into one large mountain, and the 
city of Jerusalem set upon them. There will be houses 
three miles high. The country will be full of pearls 
and gems, and there will be no more of sickness or 
defect. Only glory and enjoyment will abound for those 
permitted to share the Messiah's reign. Truly, " having 
no present, Israel threw itself on the future ! " And 
it is certainly wonderful, that the Gospels and other 
portions of the New Testament are so free from this 
wild fancy, which was all but universal in the Jewish 
world at the time when the facts of the New Testament 

1 Weber's Altsynagogale Theologie, S. 346. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. \\J 

were being made. The Christian Bible undoubtedly 
has defects and limitations, due to its age and environ- 
ment. But in no true sense can we say that it had the 
faults of its age. It did not have them. The grandeur 
and divineness of the Biblical books is that they each 
and all rise above their age, and lay hold upon truths 
that are permanent and eternal. 

12. There is no hint in the passages of the Old Tes- 
tament, or of the Apocryphal writings which are pro- 
perly called Messianic, that is, which look to a king or 
prophet for salvation, that the Messiah will suffer for 
his people or make atonement for them. " Neither in 
the pre-Christian Jewish literature/' says Professor Toy, 
" nor in the earlier Targums, is there any trace of a suf- 
fering Messiah/' 1 The personality of the Messiah is 
one which is clearly and profusely portrayed in the litera- 
ture of the period immediately preceding the advent of 
Christianity. There are many passages which associate 
closely together the forgiveness of sins and the coming 
of Messiah, but none that represent the Messiah him- 
self as accomplishing that remission in his own person. 
Indeed, a crucified Christ was to the Jews a stumbling- 
block. And the disciples themselves could not without 
effort, until driven to it in fact by the events on Golgo- 
tha, bring themselves to believe in a suffering Messiah. 
The prevailing view, as the Old Testament prophets 
had long before outlined it, was very different. Repen- 
tance and good works must precede, and so make possi- 
ble, the Messiah's coming. Whether he come early or 
late, whether he come as a royal prince or as one of the 

i Judaism and Christianity, p. 330, note. With which agree Schiirer 
ii. 184; Stanton, 122, etc. 



Il8 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

lowly, depends upon Israel's innocency. So said the 
later Jews, and the early prophets had prepared them 
for such a hope. The Messiah, then, was to be a right- 
eous and faithful ruler, a victorious general, a teacher 
of righteousness, and at last a peaceful Prince. This is 
still the idea of the Pharisees in the time of Christ, and 
finds definite expression in the Targums. The prevail- 
ing view, though some reversed it, was that Messiah 
could not come until the people repented and turned 
unto God. Another important feature of the Messi- 
anic hope was, that it did not interfere with the Jewish 
idea of the temple sacrifices. Whatever the prophets 
may have taught, the Messiah was not expected, by the 
scribes and Pharisees, to put an end to animal sacri- 
fice by the sacrifice of his own life. He was rather, 
as we have said, a prophet-king, who would at once 
set the example for his people, and rule over them in 
righteousness and truth. The more spiritual of the 
prophets may have seen in the Messiah one who would 
make animal sacrifice unnecessary, and found religion 
upon repentance, faith, and the new heart. At any 
rate, all were looking for one who would be in deepest 
and most perfect sympathy with the people, in inti- 
mate relations with God, and fitted by a divine anoint- 
ing to be an inspired and inspiring teacher, and the 
herald and organizer of the kingdom of God upon 
earth. The attributes of the Messiah are all summed 
up in the word leadership. To be sure, in the Old Tes- 
tament this leadership is often coarsely conceived and 
sensuously defined. 

But so is it also in some parts of the New Testament, 
though always at once corrected by the Biblical author. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH. II9 

And the strong men of both Testaments alike censure 
those who look for anything other than a kingdom of 
righteousness. We may admit that the best parts of 
the Old Testament did not foresee the grandeur of Je- 
sus' person and work in its totality, while yet insisting, 
on purely exegetical grounds, that the Old Testament 
builds the foundation and furnishes the plan upon which, 
and in accord with which, the life and doctrines of the 
New are developed. That basis and foundation is the 
conception of the leadership of the Messiah. Using 
the New Testament word, and yet keeping, as I believe, 
the conception of the Hebrew prophets, we may say 
that the core of the Messianic doctrine is a sublime 
faith in the spiritual leadership of Christ. But it is 
even more than this : it is a faith in Messiah's universal 
leadership. 1 

It is a noteworthy fact that in the best of the proph- 
ets the nations are to be converted to God 2 and rec- 
ognize his Anointed, — recognize in matters of religion 
the authority of one who was of the people of David. 
If we continue to call Jesus the Christ, then, we can do 

1 I leave to the New Testament exegetes to decide whether Jesus him- 
self is to be explained as a man of his times, and yet not of his times in 
the sense in which other great men are, or whether he is sui generis. The 
presupposition from the Old Testament is clearly in accord with the notion 
that the Messiah is a man and not God, an inspired prophet and not a 
ransomer of sinners. But it must be admitted that it is possible that the 
New Testament contains ideas which are contrary to the notions of the Old. 
In the words of Lessing, "I leave on one side who the person of Christ 
was. Many things which were at that time of great weight for the recep- 
tion of his doctrine possess now no longer the same importance for the rec- 
ognition of the truth of his doctrine." 

2 Isa. xlii. 1-6; li. 4, 6; lv. 5; lvi. fol.; Jer. iii. 17; xii. 14; xvi. igfol.; 
Zech. ii. 15. 



120 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

so on the basis of the Messianic prophecies, only in the 
sense that he is our teacher and leader, and not in the 
sense that he has made atonement for our sins. That 
conception belongs to a wholly different circle of ideas, 
which will be considered elsewhere. There is nothing 
new in this view, startling as it may seem to some. 
It is the view which prevailed in the Church imme- 
diately after the death of Christ. The disciples did not 
believe that Jesus had, by his death, atoned for their 
sins, but that he had been cruelly slain, and would soon 
return with power and dominion, and establish a tem- 
poral earthly kingdom. 1 Peter's famous sermon in 
the Acts does not hint at the doctrine of Jesus' expia- 
tory sacrifice. Jesus will return soon in the splen- 
dor with which he ascended into heaven. Here the 
ideas of the pre-exilian prophets reappear, which are 
correctly defined by Piepenbring, when he says, "all 
expected the restoration of the dynasty of David, which 
was to be maintained forever by a perpetual descent. ,,2 
But to maintain with Matthew's introduction, and with 
the Jewish exegesis of the Old Testament, which was 
based upon a corrupt text, that Jesus must be born in 
Bethlehem as a son of David, and his legal successor, 
is to jumble in hopeless confusion the material and 
spiritual conceptions of the Christ. 3 It is not, I think, 
impossible that Jesus, in Mark. xii. 35, meant to deny 
that he was of the seed of David. There is, at any 

1 Acts i. 6. 2 O.T. Theol., p. 221. 

3 In Mic. v. 1,2, we should read Beth Ephrath, instead of Bethlehem 
Ephrath. The incorrect reading gave rise to the Rabbinic idea that the 
Christ would be born in Bethlehem. See Targum Jerusalem on Gen. xlix. 
II; Targ. Jonathan on Zech. x. 3, 4; Isa. xi, 1; Mic. v. 2. 



FOR A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE MESSIAH, 121 

rate, an appearance of artificiality in the genealogies of 
Jesus given by Matthew and Luke. 

While, then, it is more than probable that Jesus' 
disciples often and persistently misunderstood in what 
sense he was really the promised Messiah, it is, on the 
other hand, not improbable that many Jews were in his 
day looking for just such a fulfilment of the prophets as 
is furnished by the ideal life portrayed in our Gospels. 
It can scarce be doubted that " there were some among 
the Jews, even if they were few and uninfluential, who 
were prepared to receive the true Messiah. They did 
not probably differ greatly from others in their formal 
beliefs, but they did as regards the spirit in which they 
held them, and the features in the conception of the 
Messiah and his work which most occupied their 
thoughts. Deliverance of the nation from sin, and the 
burden of God's displeasure on account of sin, fuller 
knowledge of the divine will, glad homage to Jehovah, 
and goodwill to Israel as his chosen people on the part 
of the nations of the earth, these had been traits in the 
prophetic description of the times of redemption of 
Zion. . . , To the hope of these blessings pious hearts 
turned instinctively, as the good things which they 
most desired. ,, x 

13. The impartial Old Testament exegete will frankly 
admit that the best parts of the Hebrew Scriptures 
fail to apprehend clearly, and in all its details, the mis- 
sion of Jesus of Nazareth who is called Christ. And in- 
deed the best parts of the Old Testament recognize the 
fact that there is a certain justice in interpreting their 
prophecies by their fulfilment, whatever that may be. 

1 Stanton's Jewish and Christian Messiah, p. 134. 



122 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, 

And it is only as we take advantage of this permission 
extended to us, that we can call Jesus the Christ of 
God. But while this is true, it would certainly be to 
tear the Testaments completely asunder to say that the 
New Testament Messiah was to save the world by his 
blood, to become righteousness for his people, to ran- 
som their lives with his. In the sense in which these 
words are usually understood, they imply a total de- 
parture from the Old Testament circle of ideas. And 
presumably, the New Testament writers, building as 
they did on the Old Testament, would not have advo- 
cated such doctrines. We have already seen that 
Peter's first sermon did not contain these notions. In 
what sense Jesus was a sacrifice, and in what sense he 
suffered for the sins of the world, will be discussed 
elsewhere. These are not a part of the Messiah's work, 
according to the Hebrew Scriptures. The Messianic 
idea, as we have seen, the rather emphasized the ideas 
of teacher, preacher, and leader. That this is a funda- 
mental New Testament idea is shown by these words 
from a learned New Testament scholar. " It is the 
duty of the Church to use Jesus' educating personality 
to perfect human nature ; to inforce the lesson of his 
life, and create his spirit, by presenting him, not as one 
who stood apart from humanity in rank, or as one who 
mediates between God and man, but rather as one who 
realized the moral possibility of man, and showed once 
for all how men should live ; and by so living, made 
himself a vast educational force." Jesus is the world's 
greatest prophet ; and Old and New Testaments com- 
bine in calling the Ideal Man the Wonderful Counsellor, 
Divine Leader, and Prince of Peace. 



CHAPTER VI. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR THE WAY 
OF SALVATION-. 



" The death of Christ is a vicarious 
offering, provided by God's love for the 
purpose of satisfying an internal de- 
mand of the divine holiness, and of 
removing an obstacle in the divine 
mind to the renewal and pardon of 
sinners." 

Strong's Theology. 

" For just in the blood of Christ, 

which God has not spared, lies the 

proof of his righteousness, which he 

has exhibited through the setting forth 

of Christ as an expiatory sacrifice; 

that shed blood has at once satisfied his 

justice and demonstrated it before the 

world." 

Meyer's Commentary. 



" Christians have for a long time 
believed that the temporal death of 
Christ made an atonement for sin, 
and that the literal blood of the man 
who was crucified has efficacy to 
cleanse from guilt ; but surely this is 
carnality and carnal-mindednessP 

Ballou's Atonement. 



CHAPTER VI. 

BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR THE WAY OF 
SALVATION. 

I. EARLY IDEAS OF SACRIFICE. 

i. It is proposed to discuss historically the Biblical 
doctrine of atonement with a special look-out for facts 
which will enable us to determine whether the Old 
Testament doctrine of sacrifice looks forward to Christ ; 
or whether, on the other hand, the New Testament 
writers, of necessity, used terms which were then in 
vogue, and for whose meaning we must appeal to the 
Old Testament, and in some instances to the Jewish 
Apocrypha. 

2. In the period preceding the great prophets we 
find that the ideas of justification and reconciliation 
were exceedingly naive and undeveloped. Moral ele- 
ments are conspicuously absent, or they are hopelessly 
wrapped up in ideas of ceremony and ritual. Just as 
the common life of the tribe is believed to be main- 
tained by virtue of physical relationships, and by virtue 
of the periodic participation in a common meal, so the 
common life of the god and his people is believed to 
consist in the fact that they are physically his sons. 
He partakes with them at the sacrifice of the common 
meal. The same animal sustains god and worshippers. 

125 



126 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The eating together makes them all of one flesh. So 
long as the common food remains in their bodies they 
share a common life. To injure one another would be 
self-destruction. At a very early date the flesh of the 
sacrifice was eaten alive by the worshippers, and a por- 
tion of the still quivering flesh was offered to the Deity, 
or more often the warm blood was symbolically con- 
veyed to him. 

3. The early ritual of the feast of the Passover is 
suggestive of just such a feast. The lamb is slain and 
eaten in so short a time that the cooking must have 
been slighted, if indeed the animal heat was as yet out 
of the flesh. From the analogy of Arabic sacrifices of 
which we know the whole ritual, it would seem that the 
injunction that the passover be eaten in haste, and that 
no part be left until the morning, came from a time 
when the lamb was eaten raw early in the morning 
before daybreak. In striking confirmation of this is 
the fact that the latest Pentateuchal lawgiver gives a 
special warning against eating the flesh of the Passover 
raw, 1 and the earlier Pentateuchal author ordains that 
none of the flesh be left until the morning. The morn- 
ing here referred to is the same morning on which the 
feast is held. " In this sacrifice, then," says Robertson 
Smith, speaking of a similar practice of early Semitism, 
" the significant factors are two : the conveyance of 
the living blood to the godhead, and the absorption of 
the living flesh and blood into the flesh and blood of the 
worshipper." 2 The union between God and worshipper, 
then, is due to the fact that they are sustained by a 
common life. 

1 W. R, Smith, Rel. Sem., pp. 324, 326. 2 Rel. Sem., p. 320. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. \2J 

4. Passages without number from the earlier Old 
Testament books come to mind, in which this idea of 
sacrifice is prominent. In all the early writers a sacri- 
fice is a common feast, and it is a season of thanksgiv- 
ing and rejoicing. 1 Sam. ix. 13, for example, shows 
this. A remarkable passage of similar import occurs 
in 1 Sam. xiv. The army has been fighting for a long 
period without food. After the battle they, in their 
mad hunger, slew animals taken as spoil, and ate with- 
out formally inviting Jahveh to partake with them. This 
shocked Saul ; and he hastily constructed a small altar 
and offered Jahveh his portion, after which the sacri- 
ficial feast proceeded joyously. 

There is in all this no hint of atonement ; the sacrifice 
is nothing more than a common meal of the god and 
his worshippers, by which the identity of their aims and 
interests are vividly set forth. 

Even in the latest Jewish legislation the meat of the 
sacrifice continues to be called the food of Jahveh. 1 

5. Self -mutilation of any kind was prohibited among 
the Hebrews. But in those cases (which must have 
occurred, for the Old Testament forbids them) where 
a man cuts himself, and offers his own flesh or blood or 
hair to appease the wrath of an injured neighbor or 
Deity, the idea is not that the offering atones for the 
crime committed. For, to confine ourselves to one case, 
the blood thus shed is subsequently used in a ritual act, 
which symbolizes the fact that the blood-covenant, or 
life-bond, has been restored between the two parties. 2 
This is confirmed by the Hebrew idiom in all the earlier 

1 Lev. iii. 11, with which compare Num. xv. 

2 W. R. Smith, Rel. Sem., 319. 



128 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

books of the Old Testament. Always it is said he or 
they "cut a contract." Without the shedding of blood 
there was no contract or covenant. This proclaimed 
that if either violated his word, there would be blood 
between them, while so long as the contract was unvio- 
lated they were of common blood. 1 Such sacrifice, then, 
symbolizes communion, not vicarious atonement. 

6. Another idea of sacrifice is also prominent in the 
earlier books of the Old Testament, to which we must 
now give attention. The old Hebrew word for " offer- 
ing " means, strictly speaking, a " gift." It is a gift to 
win the favor of the Deity, or to restore it if anything 
has occurred to arouse his anger against the worshipper. 
The offerings of Cain and Abel, in Gen. iv., are just 
such gifts to the Deity and nothing more. A gift, it 
was believed, would " smooth the face of the Deity and 
make him gracious." 2 The preference of the Deity for 
the offering of Abel means only this, that the author 
of Gen. iv. hated Canaanite ways and Canaanite agri- 
culture, and favored the patriarchal life and shepherd 
offerings. It has no reference whatever to the future 
shed blood of Christ. The offering of a minhah or qor- 
ban to the Deity, then, has atoning force only to the 
extent that it pleases the Deity and purchases his 
favor. It was the ancient Greek idea also that "gifts 
persuade the gods," and it is found scarcely modified 
in Ex. xxiii. 15 ; and 1 Sam xiii. 12; xxvi. 19. 

7. A third form of early sacrifice which is deserving 
of attention is the expiatory offering. Here the idea 
seems to be that the sacrifice of the victim, or the blood 

1 See Gen. xv. ; Ex. xxiv.; and Jer. xxxiv. 17-20. 

2 W. R. Smith, Rel. Sem., 328. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 1 29 

of the victim sprinkled upon the sinner, has power to 
cleanse of ceremonial impurity. An early example is 
furnished us in Deuteronomy, where the ritual is given 
to make atonement for a murdered man found in the 
field. First, it must be ascertained by actual measure- 
ment to what village the dead man's body lies nearest. 
Then that village is to assume the guilt and make 
atonement. But here, obviously, there was no inten- 
tional sin of the community that thus assumes the 
responsibility for the unfortunate man's death. And, 
further, the sacrifice seems to be effective, not from the 
fact that the victim is a ransom for sin, but from 
the ancient belief that the blood purifies. This point 
indeed is made clear by the fact that, in later times, 
a man who had been made unclean by handling the 
Sacred Scriptures or any other " most holy thing " was 
compelled to offer an expiatory sacrifice. 1 

8. However, there are cases in which the victim 
seems to be conceived as a ransom, or perhaps even as 
a substitute, though this is very doubtful ; yet in every 
case, so far as I know, the sin in question was purely 
ceremonial, most often, indeed, a sin of inadvertence. 

There were, to be sure, corruptions in later times of 
these naive ideas of sacrifice. But in the time of 
Christ, sacrifice was universally looked upon as signifi- 
cant in some one of the forms named. As a rule, in 
fact, the underlying idea was clearly that of a gift. 
" Sacrifice is a gift made to the Deity as if he were a 
man," says Tylor. And writers on the religion of 
ancient Greece affirm that the sacrifice falls merely 
under the general notion of gifts. 

1 W. R. Smith, Rel. Sem., 405. 



130 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

II. EARLY REACTIONS. 

9. Against these crude and childish ideas as to the 
proper means of securing or getting back the favor of 
the Deity, we have in the Old Testament three noble 
protests coming from the prophet, the sage, and the 
poet. Let us look at these in order. 

The prophets resisted the doctrine that there is a 
physical kinship between the Deity and his people. 
They also scoffed the idea that God had need of any 
gifts of physical worth that men could bestow. His 
likes and dislikes were conditioned upon moral worth, 
not upon the size of material offerings. Says Samuel, 
according to one of his later biographers (750 B.C.), 
" Hath Jahveh as great delight in burnt offerings and 
sacrifices as in obeying the voice of Jahveh ? Behold 
to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than 
the fat of rams." * Says Amos (760 B.C.), with what 
I think was at the time startling originality, or better, 
divinely imparted insight, "I [Jahveh] hate, I despise 
your feasts, I will not smell the savor of your appointed 2 
festivities/ ' God has no smellers. You can't win his 
favor by tickling his nostrils with boiling meat and with 
incense. "Yea," continues our prophet, " though ye of- 
fer me your burnt offerings and meat offerings, I will 
not accept them : neither will I regard the peace offer- 
ings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the 
noise of thy songs ; for I will not bear the melody of 
thy viols. But let judgment roll down as waters, and 

1 1 Sam. xv. 22. 

2 Of course not " solemn," R. V., in the sense of sad, but as above, 
which was the original meaning of solemn. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION, 131 

righteousness as a mighty stream. " * Hosea (740 b.c.) 
does not differ from nor fall behind Amos. He says, 
" Though I write for him [Ephraim] my law in ten 
thousands, they are counted as a strange thing. As 
for the sacrifices of mine offerings, they sacrifice flesh 
and eat it ; but Jahveh accepteth them not ; now will 
he remember their iniquity and visit their sins." 2 As 
the years pass by, the prophets state their views with 
more boldness and with more clearness. The oft-quoted 
passage of Isaiah illustrates this, and I give it here ac- 
cording to the translation of Canon Cheyne : " Of what 
use is the multitude of your sacrifices to me ? saith Jah- 
veh ; I am satiated with the burnt offerings of rams, 
and the fat of fed beasts, and in the blood of bullocks 
and lambs and he-goats I have no pleasure. When ye 
come to see my face, who hath required this at your 
hands — to trample my courts? Bring no more false 
offerings : a sweet smoke is an abomination to me : the 
new moon and the Sabbath, the calling of a convoca- 
tion — I cannot bear wickedness together with an 
appointed feast. Your new moons and your set days 
my soul hateth, they are an encumbrance to me, I 
am weary of bearing them. . . . Wash ye, make 
you clean, take away the evil of your works from be- 
fore mine eyes ; cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek 
out justice, righten the violent man, do justice to the 
orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us 
bring our dispute to an end, saith Jahveh. Though 
your sins be as scarlet they shall become white as 
snow, though they be red as crimson, they shall be- 
come as wool. ,, 3 

1 Amos v. 21-24. 2 Hosea viii. 12-13. 3 * sa ' *• n-18. 



132 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The climax of all this prophetic doctrine regarding 
sacrifices is reached by the author of the sixth chapter 
of Micah, who, perhaps, wrote considerably later than 
Isaiah. 1 He says, "Wherewith shall I come before 
Jahveh, and bow myself before the high God ? Shall 
I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of 
a year old? Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands 
of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall 
I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of 
my body for the sin of my soul ? He hath showed 
thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth Jahveh 
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with thy God." 2 

The prophetic point of view assumes a slightly dif- 
ferent form in Jeremiah. 3 He attacks the sacrificial 
idea by attacking its authority. According to him 
Moses was a prophet himself and not a priest, and had 
never given the commands regarding the manner 
and legitimacy of sacrifice to which the royal priests 
and prophets made their appeals. Says he, "I spake 
not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day 
that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concern- 
ing burnt offerings or sacrifices : But this thing I 
commanded them, saying, Hearken unto my voice, and 
I will be your God, and ye shall be my people." The 
emphasis is here clearly upon the living, prophetic 
voice of God. The people were lapsing into legalism 
and formalism. Jeremiah wishes to recall them from 
this ; and he does so by proclaiming Moses a prophet, 
and by emphasizing the fact that the message of the 

1 Wellhausen's Kleine Propheten, on Mic. 

2 Mic. vi. 6-8. 3 Jer. vii. 21-26. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 133 

prophets was the voice of God. And a prophet like 
Moses the people would ever have with them. 1 

10. The prophetical idea of atonement, which also 
lies at the bottom of the purely ethical portions of the 
law, runs to the effect that sins which are also crimes 
are pardonable only as the proper punishment is en- 
dured. The same idea is found in the Old Testament 
prophets and in the Gorgias of Plato. The way back to 
God is through punishment. Atonement is out of the 
question until restitution has been made. But restitu- 
tion having been made, no animal or other sacrifice is 
necessary. God has already forgiven the transgressor. 
When sacrifices are spoken of they are, as Schultz 
remarks, " transfigured by the prophets into spiritual 
thank offerings. ,, 2 The process of salvation is clearly 
outlined in the prophetic theology. There must be 
sorrow for sin, repentance, and reformation. These 
are followed by forgiveness, reconciliation, and spirit- 
ual blessing. Sacrifices are simply left out of account. 
" God has the full right to forgive sin, absolutely, with- 
out regard to legal compensation and satisfaction." 3 

The prophetic doctrine of faith as a means of appro- 
priating the free and gracious gift of salvation is simple 
and clear, but very elastic. Faith or trust in God is not 
distinguished from faith in a fellow being. But as God 
is not flesh as man is, faith in him always involves a 
belief in the supreme reality of spiritual things. Faith 
in God, then, is spiritual insight. It refuses to draw 
inferences from isolated material things here and there, 
but seeks for the eternal and unseen grounds and guar- 
anties of action. But the ethical life also consists in 

1 Deut. xviii. 2 O. T. Theol., ii. 96. 3 Op. cit., 99. 



134 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the fact that acts are not judged in their immediate 
effects, but in their unseen motives and consequences. 
Hence the prophets are right in saying that without 
faith there is no morality. Without a belief in an eter- 
nal and spiritual order, ethics drop to the realm of util- 
ities and casuistries. How close all this is to the New 
Testament doctrine of salvation by faith, I have no 
need to point out. Indeed, the watchword in the doc 
trine of Paul, "the just shall live by faith," is a quota- 
tion from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk. 1 

ii. Let us look at the protest against the sacrificial 
idea of atonement as it has come down to us in the 
writings of the sages. By the sages I mean the schools 
of wise men who have given us the Books of Job, 
Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. 

The end aimed at in Hebrew philosophy, if it may be 
called a philosophy, was wisdom, but always divine wis- 
dom, which included ethics and religion, and was iden- 
tical with communion with the Allwise. Those who 
sought wisdom, those who possessed a complete and 
rational view of life, were at once admitted into the 
presence of God. God is not here represented as pri- 
marily a God of love, but as a God of wisdom. And he 
takes especial delight in those who choose wisely from 
among their life's experiences, and reduce these to 
something like system. 2 God has set the world-age in 
man's heart. In reading out the secret of his own 
nature, man finds God and the true ideal of society. 

1 Hab. ii. 4. Cf. also Isa. xxviii. 16, where it is also affirmed that 
the man of faith is a man of steadfastness, because he believes in eternal 
and unchangeable things. 

2 Schultz, ii. 84. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 135 

Here, again, there is no doctrine of atonement. When 
sacrifices are mentioned, it is in a way more or less figur- 
ative. The only mediator needed is one who shall pro- 
claim that they who seek after God in right thinking 
and right living will find him. 

12. In modern life there is a third powerful protest 
against irrational theology. In addition to the Univer- 
salist and the Unitarian we have the Poet. So in 
ancient Israel the most truly religious of the Psalms 
soar away up out of sight and sound of the received doc- 
trines of sacrificial reconciliation. Psalms Thirty-two 
and Fifty-one may be chosen as typical illustrations of 
this. 1 It is here implied that sin shuts men away from 
God, not God away from men. But this separation is 
purely subjective, and may and should be overcome. Do 
not, says the poet to his fellows, behave like a prancing 
steed that will not come near without bit and bridle. 
Do not fear God, he will not repel you. Confess your 
transgressions and he will forgive the iniquity of your 
sins. Do not think either that you must bribe him 
over to your side, or purchase his favor, or bring a sub- 
stitute to bear your sin. He has no pleasure in sacri- 
fices or burnt offerings. 

" The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; 
A broken and a contrite heart, 

God, thou wilt not despise." 

It would be hard to find anywhere a keener sense of 
sin or a firmer faith in the loving kindness and tender 
mercy of God than that contained in the Fifty-first 
Psalm. 

1 See Cheyne and others on li. 18, 19. 



I36 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

13. It is worthy of note, if I may be permitted the 
digression, that Buddhism aligns itself with the proph- 
ets, sages, and poets on this question. 

Buddha said, "If a man live a hundred years and 
engage the whole of his time and attention in religious 
offering to the gods, sacrificing elephants and horses 
and other life, all this is not equal to one act of pure 
love in saving life ! " Buddha denounced animal sac- 
rifices as in themselves wrong : to him all life was 
sacred. 

III. THE PRIESTLY COUNTER-REFORMATION. 

14. No ecclesiasticism, however firmly grounded in 
popular prejudice, can withstand such protests as those 
that we have noticed, without undergoing a counter- 
reformation. Let us, therefore, look at the legal and 
sacrificial ideas of atonement as they appear in the post- 
exilian writers. We will dismiss Ezekiel, Zechariah, 
Haggai, Joel, and some others, with the hint that they, 
doubtless, had much to do in bringing this counter- 
reformation about. 

15. When we turn to the offerings of the Levitical 
law, we are surprised to find how large a number of 
them are no longer sacrifices, but fines and dues for 
maintaining the priests, and the elaborate system of 
praiseworthy charities managed by the Jewish Church. 1 
In passages like Lev. v. 11, sacrifices are reduced to the 
lowest possible limit. The daily meal and drink offer- 
ings of which Joel so often speaks, required a surpris- 
ingly small quantity of flour and wine. In fact, many 
Jews before the time of Christ had, doubtless, come 

1 Wellhausen's History, p. 73. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 1 37 

to look upon the sacrifices as small indeed in value as 
compared with the study of the law. 1 

When we turn to these offerings themselves, and note 
the character of the sins for which they avail, we are sur- 
prised to find that they are for sins of ignorance, or for 
omissions and misdemeanors in regard to which there 
may have been a real perplexity of conscience, the con- 
science not yet having pronounced judgment at the 
time when some decision was forced upon the offender. 

Let us look at these in detail. The sin-offering in 
Lev. iv. 2 is clear enough. He is guilty who shall sin 
by mistake in any of the things which Jahveh hath 
commanded, and a sin-offering is due from him. The 
variations from the first test case, cited in other 
parts of the chapter, and in v. 15, 17, are equally 
clear. 

The law of the guilt-offering in Lev. v. is not quite so 
easily understood. Verse 1 seems to be badly put. Yet 
scholars find in it some such meaning as this : A wit- 
ness appearing, say for a man that he knows to be in- 
nocent, forgets the best part of his testimony in the 
flurry of being called before the court, and the inno- 
cent man is condemned. Such a witness is guilty. 
He has been careless or thoughtless, or he has caught 
a panic when he should have been made morally strong 
by his sense of right. 2 

Verses 2, 3, are purely ceremonial. A man without 
knowing it is made unclean by some means, and subse- 
quently does what the law forbids an unclean person 
to do. Possibly the offence consisted in walking over 

. 1 Weber's Altsynagogale Theologie, S. 38 ff. 
2 See Toy, Judaism and Christianity, p. 226. 



138 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the grave of some dead man. The offender is guilty, 
and the act costs a lamb or a kid. 

Verse 4 has to do with rash promises and oaths. The 
language here clearly implies that the offender's inten- 
tions were good, but he was rash or thoughtless, as was 
Herod, for example, when he made the promise that 
cost the life of John Baptist. 

Lev. vi. 1-7 seems at first sight to be even more 
perplexing than v. 1. That is, it looks as though the 
writer intended to say that a man could cheat his 
neighbor out of five thousand shekels, and make it 
all right with Jahveh, by sending up- to the temple 
five shekels of the spoils wherewith to buy a ram for 
a guilt-offering. The passage runs as follows : " If any 
one sin, and commit a trespass against Jahveh, and deal 
falsely with his neighbor in a matter of deposit, or of 
bargain, or of robbery, or have oppressed his neighbor, 
or have found that which was lost, and deal falsely 
therein, and swear to a lie : in any of all these that a man 
doeth, sinning therein; then it shall be, if he hath sinned y 
and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took, 
. . . and bring his guilt-offering unto Jahveh." Now, 
the whole of this passage has its secret in the repeti- 
tion of the "if" idea. If it is perfectly evident that 
the man has sinned, why the reiteration of the "if"? 
The fact is, it was not evident at the time. The lan- 
guage, especially its literary dependence upon Ex. xxii. 
7-13, clearly shows this. It was a case of real per- 
plexity of conscience. Let us enlarge upon one detail 
of the passage by way of illustration. In the great 
bulk of our trade to-day we have one known .quantity 
in almost every exchange of goods. In ancient times 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 1 39 

when trade was, between neighbors, largely barter, 
there were two unknown quantities. Suppose a man 
exchanges two cows for a horse, often he could not 
tell the relative value of the two cows and the horse 
until he had owned them all for a certain length of 
time. Then, when experience brings it to his notice, 
he becomes aware of the fact that he knew all the 
time that he was cheating his neighbor. 

16. Now, in modern ethics, sins of ignorance, unless 
the ignorance is " criminally acquired," are not sins. 
In modern ethics, too, the existence of real perplexities 
of conscience is admitted. And it is also claimed that 
one may decide amiss in such a case, without being 
guilty of sin. The future alone could decide whether 
the act were good or bad. Moderns say that the igno- 
rant offender must take the consequences of his blun- 
ders. So said the Levitical law. It is said of these 
ignorant, conscience-perplexed offenders, one after an- 
other, " He is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity." 
That does not mean that the ram shall bear it, or 
that he bears it in the loss of his ram. But he bears 
his iniquity in taking the punishment prescribed by the 
laws of nature and of civil society. 

In exact agreement with Leviticus is the book of 
Hebrews. According to Heb. ix. 7 (R. V.), the 
High Priest offers sacrifices " for the ignorances of the 
people." But the author of Hebrews goes farther, and 
declares, as does Paul, that sins of this kind are formal 
rather than real, and that the sacrificial means of atone- 
ment is of the same nature. " Gifts and sacrifices can- 
not, as touching the conscience, make the worshipper 
perfect, being only carnal ordinances, imposed until a 



140 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

time of reformation. . . . For it is impossible that the 
blood of bulls and goats should take away sins." x 

In no case, then, will a sacrifice enable a man to 
escape the consequences of moral transgression. But 
why must another take them, we ask, if the offender 
must bear them himself ? Where is the substitution ? 
In what does the ransom consist ? Obviously the ven- 
erable Bishop Burnett was altogether wrong when he 
wrote, " The notion of an expiatory sacrifice which was 
there when the New Testament was writ, well under- 
stood all the world over, both by Jews and Gentiles, 
was this : that the sin of one person was transferred 
on a man or a beast, who upon that was devoted or 
offered to God, and suffered in the room of the offend- 
ing person." 2 And Professor Schultz is right in say- 
ing, " The sin-offering and guilt-offering of the Torah 
are admissible only in cases where there has been no 
wicked intention. " 3 

17. Some scholars have tried to show that the ideas 
that underlay the ceremonies of the " day of atone- 
ment " were of a somewhat different nature, and do 
imply a belief in substitutionary atonement. In the 
first place, it should be said that the part played by the 
scapegoat in the " day of atonement " is essentially 
foreign to the religion of the Old Testament, and the 
idea cannot with certainty be said to appear in the New 
Testament at all. The account of the sacrifice is given 

1 Heb. ix. 7-10, x. 1-4, and Cone's Gospel and Its Earliest Interpreta- 
tions, p. 240 fol. 

2 Quoted by Professor Everett, Gospel of Paul, p. 4. 

3 Schultz's Old Testament Theology, vol. ii. p. 307. See also Piepen- 
bring's Theology of the Old Testament, pp. 309-316. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 141 

in Lev. xvi. Two goats are chosen ; and of these one is 
appointed by lot for a sacrifice, and the other is loaded 
with the sins of the people, and is driven away into the 
wilderness. 1 The whole chapter seems to be a trans- 
formation of an earlier idea, in which it was believed 
that there was in the wilderness a place of sin, where 
all sins belonged, and that it was the function of the 
scapegoat to bear them thither to Azazel. 2 The idea 
that in the ordinary sacrifice the sins of the people are 
transferred to the victim by the imposition of the hands 
of the priest is contradicted by the fact that it is not 
the goat which is sacrificed that bears the sins of the 
people, but the other goat which is thereby rendered 
unclean and unholy. But the flesh of the sacrificial 
victim is, in fact, always holy ; it is spoken of as the food 
of God : and the blood of the victim had power to 
cleanse and make holy the people or the altar tables 
and vessels that were sprinkled with it. 3 When, there- 
fore, the book of Hebrews affirms that without the 
shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, it 
refers to the purifying powers of the blood, and not 
to the fact that one creature must die for the sins of 
another. 4 

1 Kuenen thinks Lev. xvi. an integral part of Ezra's law-book. Oort 
cuts out part of it. Reuss and Zunz think it a later semi-heathen impor- 
tation. Cf. Kuenen's Hexateuch, pp. 86, 311, 312; Lev. xxiii. 26-32, and 
Num xxix. 7-1 1. 

2 " Azazel " may mean this realm of sin in the wilderness, or the 
demon that presides over it. Compare the similar notion of a place of 
sin in Zech. v. 5-1 1. 

3 Cave's Spiritual Doctrine of Sacrifice, p. 129 fol. 

4 Hebrews ix. 22, considerably modified from Lev. xvii. 11. 



142 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

IV. THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE. 

1 8. In the light of the discussion as it has progressed 
thus far, what presumably does Paul, to single out the 
greatest New Testament theologian, mean when he 
speaks of " sacrifice " and "faith" in connection with 
the justification and reconciliation secured to us by 
Jesus Christ ? Is his idea of sacrifice different from 
that of the law ? If not, Christ's sacrifice, even if 
conceived literally, can do no more than free us from 
sins of ignorance, which, according to modern notions, 
are not sins at all. Yet, to Jewish notions, these sins 
of ignorance were often just the only things that re- 
pelled the divine favor. According to the late pro- 
logue of the Book of Job, that patriarch regularly 
offered sacrifices to God for each of his sons, lest, per- 
chance, they had unwittingly sinned against the Deity. 1 
The great day of atonement among the later Jews was 
a sacrifice in which all Israel, as an organic unit, was 
set free from any evil consequences that might come 
to them through sins of ignorance. This atonement 
was universal. So according to Paul the sacrifice of 
Christ was suited, once for all, to remove from every 
man any feeling of dread that might haunt him, lest 
in a moment of thoughtlessness he had done or said 
something that might alienate him forever from his 
God. Again and again Paul speaks of the atonement 
made by Christ as something which would benefit 
men whether they would or no. Ritschl apprehended 
clearly the fact that Paul's view of atonement was 
social ; that his own language implies that it must be 

1 Job i. 5. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 1 43 

so, unless we limit all his broader statements by his 
narrower ones. 1 It is the world as a whole for which 
atonement is made by Christ. And they who come 
unto God by him realize in a special sense that this is 
true. He who believes in Christ has no need any 
longer to offer sacrifice at the temple. 

Paul took to heart the language of Gal. iii. 10, as 
"John Ward, Preacher/' did the doctrine of hell. It 
was to his sensitive nature a terrible, haunting reality. 
All were under a curse; all were doomed to a life of 
torture in the age to come. To be sure, in the time 
of Christ the means of reconciliation in the Jewish 
theology were legion. But dangers also were legion 
and imminent. A man never knew when he might 
be doing something that was ceremonially or ethically 
wrong. It needed an expert to keep the law. So, as 
Weber truly says, a man never knew just how he, as an 
individual, stood with his God. Against all this the 
nobility in Paul's soul revolts. Grant that all are under 
a curse, it is not possible that God can damn the whole 
race. There must be many saved. Human nature 
and divine love alike demand it. The law had to be 
abrogated, and it was abrogated in Christ. All arti- 
ficial and imaginary barriers between God and man 
are torn away. God henceforth looks upon the heart 
and its intentions, and not upon the sins of ignorance. 
While, therefore, the atonement, according to Paul, 
avails for every man, he agrees, on the other hand, 
with the ancient author, who says, " If I regard iniquity 
in my heart, Jahveh will not hear me." In other words, 
while the death of Christ atones for sins of inadver- 

1 Pfleiderer's Development of Theology, p. 193. 



144 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

tence, it does not atone for wilful sins ; nor is Christ a 
real Saviour, except by the exercise of those powers 
of uprightness, love, and faith which he himself ex- 
ercised. 

How, according to St. Paul, did the death of Christ 
reconcile men to God ? How did it free men from the 
evil consequences of sins that must inadvertently or of 
necessity have been committed. In this way. He who 
did not keep the whole law was guilty of breaking it 
all, or, in other words, was altogether a transgressor. 
But to keep it all was an impossibility, because of 
its very multiplicity of ceremonial and ethical details. 
Therefore, God had counted all under sin. Christ re- 
deemed the world, not by taking its sins, but by being 
the medium for declaring void that which made men 
sinners ; namely, the law. And now the question arises, 
How did Christ, or God through Christ, set aside the 
Mosaic Law ? The answer to this appears in a com- 
parison of Gal. iii. 13 with Deut. xxi. 22, 23. Paul 
says, " Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, 
having become a curse for us." Had Paul stopped 
there we would perhaps be warranted in saying that 
God punished Christ for our sins. But Paul does not 
stop. He continues quoting the passage from Deuter- 
onomy, " Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." 
So, then, Christ is not crucified because he is cursed, 
because he has the sins of the world to bear. But he 
is cursed because he, though innocent, yea, even sinless, 
has been crucified and hung to a tree, and thereby 
declared unclean, — so unclean, in fact, that if he is 
allowed to hang all night thus he will pollute the whole 
Holy Land. "Thou shalt bury him the same day," 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 1 45 

says the Deuteronomist, " for he that is hanged is a 
curse of God. Bury him, lest thou defile thy land." 1 

Now, here is an irreconcilable conflict between a 
law which is in many ways "holy, just, and good," and 
a man who is " without sin," and yet who, by a provi- 
dential chain of events, has become a curse in the eye 
of the law. What is to be the outcome ? With whom 
will the Deity side ? For three days, runs the story, 
the momentous problem remained unsolved. Then, lo, 
the spirit revives, the letter dies. Christ rose from 
the dead ; the law was crucified. It has been common 
to appeal to Gal. iii. 13 as the ruling passage in support 
of the idea that Christ in some way died in our stead. 
But Paul's context is clearly against all this. Ritschl 
affirms that passages like Rom. iii. 25 and 2 Cor. v. 21 
are figurative, while this is literal, and he repeats on 
several occasions that there is no hint in this passage 
of the sacrificial idea. 2 Prof. James Drummond has 
given expression to a similar idea. Says he, "The 
curse of the law, valid till then, lost its power by touch- 
ing one to whom it could have no just application. By 
the law he was cursed ; by the very nature of righteous- 
ness and of God he was blessed ; and therefore the law 
was dead." Even more interesting than his own valua- 
ble note is Professor Drummond's testimony that the 
Fathers held this view of the passage before him. Jus- 
tin Martyr, says he, denied that Christ was a curse of 

1 For the persistence of these ideas in later times, see Tobit i. 7 and ii. 
1 1 , passim, and the New Testament accounts of the necessity of immediate 
burial. 

2 Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, SS. 48, 174, 246-263, with which 
agree Everett's Gospel of Paul, and James Drummond's Galatians, pp. 
118, 121. 



146 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

God; and Theodoret, in a note on Gal. iii. 13, affirmed 
that Christ " himself accepted the death which accord- 
ing to the law was accursed." 

Professor Everett has recently come to the support of 
this interpretation of the Pauline doctrine in a very 
readable book upon the " Gospel of Paul." And not 
far different from this view, if at all, is this remarkable 
passage in Ballou's " Treatise on the Atonement : " * 
" The literal death of the man, Christ Jesus, is figurative, 
and all the life we obtain by it is by learning what it 
represented. The literal body of Jesus represented the 
whole letter of the law, with all the allegories contained 
in the word of prophecy. The death of the body of 
Jesus represented the death and destruction of the 
letter, when the spirit comes forth bursting the veil 
thereof, which is represented by the resurrection of 
Jesus from the dead." 

19. That this interpretation of the passage is the cor- 
rect one is further shown by the fact that in Col. ii. 
Paul closely connects the ideas of forgiveness of sins 
and freedom from details of the law. 2 In other words, 
their sins have been forgiven, not because the demands 
of the law have been satisfied, but because the law 
itself has been abrogated. Further confirmation comes 
from the fact that the Gospel tradition represents Jesus 
as taking great liberties with the law. He broke the 
Sabbath, and openly combated the " Mosaic " practice 
of giving qorban. How then could such an one by being 
slain satisfy the law, the just suffering for the unjust ? 
Indeed, Christ cannot be called a sacrifice, except by 
figure of speech, for there was no altar and no priest on 

1 Miner's Edition, p. 167. 2 Everett's Paul, 160, 162. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 1 47 

Calvary. His death, however, did bring forgiveness 
and reconciliation, hence the idea that he was a sin- 
offering or a guilt-offering might easily arise. Yet how 
loosely that idea was held appears from Heb. ix. 13-15, 
where Christ's blood cleanses not from sin, but from 
the dead formalisms of the law, and restores the living 
worship of God. 1 In fact, it is readily seen, that, if 
Christ suffered in accordance with the law and to sat- 
isfy its demands, then the Mosaic law, ritual and all, 
must still hold good. The epistle of James seems to 
see and adopt this conclusion. 

20. That the New Testament, as a whole, does not 
adopt the view that Jesus was a literal sacrifice is obvi- 
ous from the fact that Jesus is variously spoken of as 
our ransom, expiation, passover, sin-offering, prophet, 
and high-priest. To try to get substitutionary or expia- 
tory atonement out of such a diversity of figures is, as 
Ballou says, " carnality and carnal-mindedness. ,, But 
inasmuch as the law was the mediator of righteousness 
to the Jew, Christ, as the destroyer of Jewish particu- 
larism, naturally became in a special sense the mediator 
of the Gentile. This appears clearly in Paul's context, 
and so confirms our interpretation. Christ was made a 
curse, " that upon the Gentiles might come the blessing 
of Abraham." 2 

21. Now, this " blessing of Abraham," of which Paul 
speaks, is exactly the prophetic idea of atonement. It 
is confidence in the ideal man, faith in the final real- 
ization of the possible man. The law, says Paul, could 
not secure this. It bound man down to hard and fast 
rules. " It was weak through the flesh." It was ne- 

1 Everett's Paul, 169, 170. 2 Gal. ii. 14. 



I48 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

cessary ; it had a real and important work to perform. 
But it was purely transitory, it was a side issue. To 
use Paul's own language, i/o'/xos Sc irapetd^XOev. 1 Paul is 
right here ; for the story of Abraham, to which he 
appeals, has come down to us from the classic period of 
Hebrew prophecy, and precedes the law. It must have 
been composed not far from the times in which lived 
the four great prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah. 
The doctrines taught in this charming bit of story are 
the doctrines of the prophets. Paul, then, by his own 
confession, carries his doctrines back to # the prophets. 
The mediating priest is set aside. Every man has 
access to God. The heavenly Father is beforehand 
favorable to every penitent. They who have faith in 
Jesus, as the divinely appointed abrogator of ceremo- 
nial law, have immediate access to God, and may receive 
the adoption of sons. Jesus often called himself " Son 
of man," less often " Son of God." Paul claims this 
divine brotherhood and sonship for all Jesus' followers. 
And they possess it in virtue of the fact that Christ is 
formed within them. The law of God, full of sweet 
and reasonable morality, is written on the fleshly tab- 
lets of their hearts. Each man is a law to himself, and 
the bond of union is the Christ-ideal. 

22. This view of Paul's doctrine of the person and 
work of Christ finds support in a very large percentage 
of the early Christian literature. The Gospels lay chief 
stress upon the works and teachings of Christ. If 
Paul's doctrines had been taken in the sense that 
Christ was punished for our sins, it is probable that 
our Gospels would have been deeply colored with 

Rom. v. 20. 



FOR THE WAY OF SALVATION. 1 49 

that thought. The fact that they are not so colored 
argues that Paul was not so understood. 

The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which was the 
catechism of the early Christian churches, clearly sup- 
ports the above interpretation. The ethical part of 
the document is very simple, though complete. The 
prayer recommended is the Lord's Prayer, which is to 
be said thrice daily. Faith is exalted a spiritual in- 
sight into divine things, and into a mystic union with 
Jesus who is called not God, but a " servant of God." x 

Equally worthy of comment were the ideas of sacri- 
fice common among the early Christians. If any of 
them held to a substitutionary doctrine of atonement, 
he must have created the same de novo. For all through 
the early Fathers the idea of sacrifice prevails, which is 
expressed in the following quotation from the epistle 
of Diognetus (150 a.d.). " Whereas the Greeks, by 
offering these things to senseless and deaf images, 
make an exhibition of stupidity, the Jews, considering 
that they are presenting them to God, as if he were in 
need of them, ought in all reason to count it folly, and 
not religious worship. For he that made heaven and 
earth . . . cannot himself need any of these things 
which he himself supplieth." 2 Obviously here the 
sacrificial victim is not something which is punished for 
man as a satisfaction for sin. It is merely a free gift, 
an offering to the Deity to please him. 

23. I have hinted at Hosea Ballou's prophetic insight 
in apprehending before his time some of the ideas that 
the Higher Criticism and modern historical investiga- 
tion generally, have made commonplaces. When he 

1 Greek naig. 2 Quoted by Prof. Everett, Paul, p. 60. 



I50 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

affirms that the Gospel is but the spirit of ancient 
Prophetism set free, or as Joel would say, ' poured out 
upon all flesh, he has done all in his power to approve 
the thesis of our title, " Back to the Old Testament." 
Ballou never tires of saying that God's attitude toward 
man is that of tender love, now and always. And man 
has only to realize by faith this truth, which Jesus' 
teachings, life, death, and resurrection reveal, in order 
to have free access to the heavenly Father. The 
reason men had resort to sacrifices and penances was 
because they thought God was angry and needed to be 
appeased. "As if," says Ballou, "he who commands 
us to love our enemies could hate or be angry with any 
man ! " \ " God never called for a sacrifice to reconcile 
himself to man." 2 

In what sense, then, is Christ a Saviour, according to 
Ballou ? His reply shall be our reply. It is the only 
one that will suit our argument. Jesus saves because 
he "has power to cause us to love holiness and hate 
sin. He has power to reveal the divine beauties of the 
world ; to remove the letter and its administration, which 
are death, to take the veil from the heart, and to cause 
us to see himself altogether lovely." 3 Now, this is, I 
maintain, the teaching of the prophets, sages, and 
poets of the Old Testament, and it is not contradicted 
by the law, when we understand the doctrine of sacri- 
fices in its entire history. Christianity joins itself 
directly to Prophetism as its completion and fulfil- 
ment. The ancient Jews said the law is the body, the 
prophets are the soul. We say the body dies, but the 
soul lives on forever. 

1 P. 151. 2 P. 147. • P. 165. 



CHAPTER VII. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR THE 
SUFFERING CHRIST. 



" The children of the world are members one of another. When the Holy 
One desires to give healing to the world, he smites one just man amongst them, 
and for his sake heals all the rest. Whence do we learn this ? From the 

saying, l He was wounded for our transgressions? " 

Talmud. 



" Not by breaking from the community was the individual to realize himself, 
but by taking it to his heart, by feeling its sorrows and its sins, as if they were 
his own, and by sharing its misery, and even its punishment from God." 

G. A. Smith. 



CHAPTER VII. 

BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR THE SUFFERING 

CHRIST. 

I. THE SOCIAL VIEW OF ATONEMENT ACCORDING TO 2 ISAIAH. 

i. That the sacrifice of a human victim has supreme 
power to win the favor or avert the disfavor of a deity, 
is an idea widely prevalent in primitive society. The 
practice of offering human sacrifices has been, in times 
past, well-nigh universal. There are several passages 
in the Old Testament which indicate that this was, at 
one time, an orthodox Hebrew practice. It is probable 
that we have relics of it in the expression " before 
Jahveh," that occurs in the account of the murder of 
Agag by Samuel, and in the story of the hanging up, 
before Jahveh at Gibeah, of the relatives of Saul. Still 
clearer are the large number of passages in which it is 
said that a man is made "to pass through the fire." 
In some of these it is stated that the victim passed 
through the fire to Moloch. But others make no such 
limitation ; and Jahveh, who was a consuming fire, and 
whose original abode was the lightning-capped Sinai, 
was equally conceived, by some Israelites, to be a God 
who could be appeased by the burning before him of a 
human sacrifice. 1 Ahaz and Manasseh are both said, 

1 See especially Deut. xii. 30, 31. 
*53 



154 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

by the Book of Kings, to have sacrificed their sons, 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel both knew of the practice, and 
condemned it; and Josiah sought to root out this 
relic of barbarism entirely. 1 One of the most inter- 
esting passages bearing upon this question, is found 
in i Kings xvi. 34, where an account is given of the 
rebuilding of Jericho. The founding of a city was, 
in early times, an event of great importance. 2 The 
city, as a whole, must, by some rite or ceremony, be 
dedicated to a god, or must purchase his protecting 
favor. Hiel, the Bethelite, when he rebuilt Jericho, 
sacrificed a son at the laying of the foundation, and 
another son when he set up the gates. The original 
purport of the passage is partly obscured by the proph- 
ecy of the events in Josh. vi. 26, where a curse is pro- 
nounced upon the man who shall rebuild the city. But 
the original meaning of the passage in Kings is per- 
fectly clear. And it is, obviously, the intention of both 
passages to censure the practice of human sacrifice. 3 
So, too, the famous chapter of the sacrifice of Isaac in 
Gen. xxii. is clearly intended to show that human sacri- 
fices are no longer pleasing to Jahveh. 4 The implica- 

1 Cf. 2 Kings xvi. 3; xvii. 17; xxi. 6; xxiii. 10; Jer. xxxii. 25; Ezek. xx. 
26, 31. The practice is condemned in Deut. xviii. 10; Lev. xviii. 21. 
The early passage condemns it as a corrupt form of Jahveh worship; the 
later one, as a form of idolatry. 

2 Coulanges' Ancient City, p. 177 fol. 

3 Dillmann regards this view "an unfounded conjecture," and cites, 
from classic history, proof that it was a cursed thing to build waste cities. 
Numeri, Deuteronomium und Josua, S. 466. 

4 Says Professor Kuenen in his Hexateuch, p. 244: " Gen. xxii. shows 
how Elohim, though having the right to demand the sacrifice of chil- 
dren, does not actually require it, but is content with the willingness to 
make it." 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 1 55 

tions of the Hebrew law agree with the histories in 
this regard. Originally all first-born belonged to Jah- 
veh. And the firstlings of flock and field were sacri- 
ficed. But already in the oldest law human sacrifice 
is tacitly condemned. It is said that the first-born 
sons are Jahveh's, but his not to be offered in sacrifice, 
but to minister to him as priests. And when the 
Levites took the place of the first-born they were 
bought off (redeemed) from this service. 1 And if, in- 
deed, sacrifice goes back for its origin to the times of 
totemism, when the sacrificial animal was really looked 
upon as a sacred animal, if not, indeed, as a fellow 
tribesman, we can see how the substitution of the totem 
animal for the first-born might have appeared a per- 
fectly valid exchange. 

2. As time went on, however, it became apparent 
that neither human nor animal sacrifices gave expres- 
sion to the highest truths of ethics and religion. It 
was inevitable that the Jews would come to see that 
bloody sacrifices were not in accord with either pure 
worship or good morals ; that only a depraved con- 
science could think of offering a bull or goat, or even 
the fruit of the body, for the sin of the soul. 2 Yet, 
on closer reflection, it must have appeared that the real 
essential truth in the sacrificial idea found its fullest 
expression in human sacrifice, when correctly under- 
stood. And, in fact, the true idea which underlay this 
notion survived and found expression in a large num- 
ber of passages. It consists in the belief that the 

1 See the Little Book of the Covenant, Ex. xxxiv. 20, the Book of the 
Covenant, Ex. xxii. 29, and the Deuteronomic section, Ex. xiii. I, 2 fol. 

2 Mic. vi. 6-8. 



156 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

righteous men in a community possess the power to 
atone for sin and avert evil. This notion does not 
connect itself directly with that of human sacrifice. 
Never in the early literature, at least, are the right- 
eous spoken of as a sacrifice. The idea is rather based 
upon the primitive conception of the oneness of the 
tribe or nation. 1 Just as the sin of Achan brings its 
evil consequences upon the whole people, and even, 
when he is detected, results in the death of his wife, 
children, and animals, so a few righteous men might, 
on a similar conception of society, avert a threatened 
evil. Abraham finally succeeds in obtaining from Jah- 
veh the promise that, if there are ten righteous men 
in Sodom, he will "not destroy the city for the ten's 
sake/' 2 This same idea finds expression in a well- 
known passage in Ezekiel, wherein he says, "When a 
land sinneth against me by committing a trespass, and 
I stretch out mine hand upon it, and break the staff of 
the bread thereof, and send famine upon it, and cut off 
from it man and beast ; though these three men, Noah, 
Daniel, and Job were in it, they should deliver but their 
own souls by their righteousness, saith Jahveh God." 3 
A few verses later Ezekiel states explicitly that these 
men could deliver neither son nor daughter. The 
family is no longer, as in the story of Achan, a 
social unit. Jeremiah, too, has a passage which is 
similar to that in Ezekiel. Jahveh says, "Though 

1 Josh. vii. and Num. xvi. 1-35; 2 Sam. xxiv; 2 Kings xxiii. 26, and 
often. 

2 Gen. xviii. 16-33. Isaiah gives expression to the same idea, and with 
the same event in mind, in i. 9, a fact which runs counter to the late date 
assigned to the Genesis passage by Smend. 

8 Ezek. xiv. 13, 14. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 1 57 

Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind 
could not be toward this people " (xv. 1). And on 
several occasions Jeremiah affirms that the prayers of 
righteous men will not avail to avert the coming dis- 
aster (vii. 16; xi. 14), In none of these passages is 
it implied that the righteous suffer for the wicked, or 
even with them. The passage in Ezekiel, indeed, ex- 
plicitly states that the three will save their own lives. 
The righteous, then, in these passages, do not save 
the people by suffering for them, but by living among 
them. 1 

In a different series of passages, however, Jeremiah, 
while not forsaking his position as a mild individualist, 
affirms that he himself, though righteous, must with 
his nation take the consequences of a sinful life. The 
punishment which they have incurred falls with espe- 
cial force upon him. " The way of man is not in him- 
self ; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps " 
(x. 23). These steps are directed by Jahveh, or, rather, 
they are directed by the corporate life of the nation, of 
which each separate man is a part. While, then, Jere- 
miah's theology leads him to expect that the righteous 
may save themselves, his own experience was to the 
effect that the good and the bad suffer together for the 
sins of the bad. Ezekiel, too, for all his reiteration of 
the doctrine that the soul that sinneth, not some other, 
shall die for its sins, still regards nations as units, and 
forces every patriot to take his country's fate. Even 
in Sheol the peoples are arranged according to their 
nationality. 2 There is an unseen conflict here. And, 

1 This is the idea that underlies the College Settlements in our day. 

2 Ezek. xxxii. 17 fol. 



158 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

obviously, the new individualism must produce, in turn, 
a new and more perfect conception of solidarity. Two 
of the greatest Hebrews of antiquity, but whose names 
are unknown, wrestled with this problem. The author 
of Job is sure that righteousness does not always, and 
at once, result in happiness and prosperity. The Second 
Isaiah is sure that the righteous suffer with and for the 
wicked. They are, as it were, a guilt-offering to Jah- 
veh for the sins of their people. While, then, the 
time-solidarity (heredity) is declared insufficient to 
explain this momentous problem of evil, it is tacitly 
affirmed that the space-solidarity (socialism) is able to 
throw a new light upon the subject. 

3. The Book of Deuteronomy had brought the older 
thought to a focus, and stated categorically that right- 
eousness and happiness are coextensive. If a man is 
righteous he will be prosperous and happy, if he is 
wicked he will be unfortunate and unhappy. Con- 
versely, he who suffers misfortune must either in him- 
self or in his parents be a sinner. 1 This is similarly 
the point of view of Job's friends, and against which the 
patriarch so nobly rebels. Now, the Second Isaiah 
accepted in part and rejected in part the current philo- 
sophy. He denied, as did the author of Job, that in 
every individual case prosperity follows equity. But 
he affirmed that in the nation as a whole, righteousness 
and blessing, wickedness and cursing, do balance each 
other. What had manifestly proved itself untrue in 
many individual cases was true of the community, the 
nation, and the world. Said the champions of the new 
solidarity, " Blessed is the nation that fears the Lord." 

1 See Deut. xxviii. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 1 59 

In a sense all this was but a return to an older view. 
But it was that older, childlike view lifted into self-con- 
sciousness. A truth, which at first had been seen only 
on its physical side, was now seen on its moral and 
spiritual side. The doctrine of the equivalence of 
righteousness and blessing assumed, through the insight 
into human sympathy, a new and mighty spiritual signifi- 
cance. According to the Babylonian Isaiah, not only 
is it tcf be frankly admitted, then, that the righteous 
suffer, but it is equally true that they suffer willingly. 
Their sufferings are for a purpose, they are vicarious ; 
that is, they suffer to redeem Israel and the whole 
world, and bring them to God. 1 Israel was slow to rec- 
ognize this great mission which the prophet saw for 
him. The nation was prone to underestimate its great 
prophets and statesmen. And, on the other hand, these 
saints often felt that they were not appreciated, either 
by their fellows or their Deity. But the Great Un- 
known has a word of momentous consequence for them. 
When, because of his disasters, and from a conscious- 
ness of his sins, Israel says, " I have labored in vain, I 
have spent my strength for nought and vanity," Jah- 
veh says in reply, "It is too light a thing that thou 
shouldst be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, 
and to restore the preserved of Israel : I will also give 
thee for a light to the Gentiles, that my salvation may 
be unto the end of the earth." 2 This is indeed a 

1 With the idea that righteousness and happiness balance not in the 
nation simply but in the whole world, as Isaiah's thought really implies, 
Carlyle could have agreed. Says he, " There is not a red Indian hunting 
by Lake Winnipic can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must 
smart for it." — Sartor Resartus. 

2 Isa. xlix. 1-6. 



l6o BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

remarkable passage. It seems to " point, as it were, 
beyond the borders of the Israelitish religion." 1 It 
contains the germs of Christianity and of the absolute 
religion, the universal religion. 

4. Who, then, is it, that according to Second Isaiah, 
makes this atonement for Israel's sins ? Just who or 
what is this servant of Jahveh, mentioned so often by 
the prophet ? The term is often used in the Old Testa- 
ment. It is employed in Job i. 8 ; ii. 3, where perhaps 
the patriarch is thought of as a symbol of the afflicted 
nation. Proselytes are also called servants of Jahveh, 
but the term is most often used of the prophets. There 
has been much controversy as to the real meaning of 
Isa. liii. Because of the New Testament use of it, 
it has been held to be a Messianic section, giving a 
clear and concise prediction of the work and atoning 
death of Jesus. This view has now very generally been 
abandoned, or it is held, if at all, in a greatly modified 
form. The difficulties in the way of the old interpreta- 
tion are insuperable. On the other hand, it has been 
held that the servant is either the whole nation, viewed 
as an organic unit, or at any rate, the righteous part of 
it so regarded. 

That the Second Isaiah means by the servant of Jah- 
veh the Israelitish nation, or the pious kernel in the 
nation, and not an individual Messiah, is evident from a 
number of considerations. Not only does he explicitly 
call Cyrus the Messiah (xlv. 1), but he just as clearly 
calls the nation, 2 or the righteous portion of the nation, 3 

1 Kuenen, Religion of Israel, ii. 138. 

2 Isa. xli. 8; xlii. 1, 18-21; xliv. 1, 2, 21; xlv. 4; xlviii. 20; xlix. 3; 
with which compare also Jer. xxx. 10; Ezek. xxviii. 25. 

8 Isa. xlix. 1-7; liii. 1-12. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. l6l 

or the prophets of the nation, 1 the servant of Jahveh 
who makes atonement for the sins of the nation and 
of the world. This suffering servant cannot have been 
Christ, for to the prophet he exists in the present and 
has suffered in the past. According to Wellhausen, 2 
the case is put much stronger than this. The nation as 
a nation has ceased to exist, the servant of Jahveh is 
dead. But by reason of the atonement made by the 
nation, there will be a resurrection. He, the nation, 
shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days. As thus 
interpreted, the passage makes Second Isaiah look for 
a renewal of the national life. 3 And this renewal or 
resurrection of tfie Jewish state is to be brought about 
by the teachings and sympathetic and even painful 
labors of the righteous, who are mediators of God to the 
people. 

If the servant is the whole nation rather than the 
righteous kernel, then the servant's righteousness is 
technical rather than real. Indeed, some of the fairest 
critics reconcile these apparently diverse opinions. The 
prophet seems to think of the term " servant of Jah- 
veh " as applying at one time to the righteous and at an- 
other time to the righteous and sinful together. "The 
truth is," says Piepenbring, "that he gives it by turns to 
both of them." In more significant language Schultz 
expresses a similar view. He says the servant " is 
considered one with empirical Israel in its vocation, 

1 Isa. xliv. 26; xlviii. 16; 1. 4-10; lxi. 1-3. 

2 History of Israel, pp. 400, 401. The servant is here identified with 
the whole people. 

3 Ezekiel's valley of dry bones teaches not the resurrection of individ- 
uals, but of the nation (Ezek. xxxvii.). . 



1 62 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

although distinguished from it in its actual form." 
The prophet, then, by courtesy identifies with the 
servant those who are Israelites merely in name. But 
in his own thought he grants atoning powers only to 
those who are Israelites in reality. Or, to state the 
matter differently, the nation was technically just, its 
civil code was the law of Jahveh, and its religion was 
the religion of the true God, who was Lord of the 
whole earth ; but, nevertheless, wicked men in the state 
have brought down the divine wrath. To avert this 
and save the people, the nation presents itself as a sin 
offering, which is accepted and the nation is slain. It 
has gone into captivity and ceased to t>e. But all this 
was done for a purpose, to save Israel and the world. 
The faithfulness of a portion of Israel will prevent God 
from destroying the wicked who help to compose it 
(lxv. 8-10). The true Saviour of Israel in any case, 
then, is its righteous men. 

" It is theirs," says Schultz, " by meekness, gentle- 
ness, and inexhaustible strength, in the fulness of the 
spirit and of prophetic eloquence, to make atonement 
for Israel, to lead him out of prison, to enlighten him, 
and then to become a light unto the Gentiles." 1 

5. According to liii. 10, the servant is a guilt-offering 
for sin. As we have already seen in a preceding chap- 
ter, the guilt-offering availed only for sins of inadver- 
tence or of perplexity of conscience. Wilful sins or 
crimes were punished by the civil law; after which 
the broken and contrite, that is, punished and repen- 
tant, spirit might find peace with God. The presenting 
his soul, then, as an offering for sin is not the most 

1 Schultz, O. T. TheoL, vol. i, p. 315. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 1 63 

important part of the servant's work, if we use the 
word offering in its usual sense. According to 2 Isaiah 
sin consisted in the intent more than in the act. And 
it is a question whether he did not believe that ani- 
mal sacrifice was a superstition which ought in justice 
to be done away (lviii. 13, 14, lxv., lxvi.). He certainly 
does not mention circumcision as a requisite to ad- 
mission into the church (liv. 6-8). At any rate, if 
we allow Isaiah's book to be the definition of the 
" guilt-offering," we shall find in it a richness and 
fulness of meaning found nowhere else. In the Priest 
Code the asham is ethical, but it is not spiritual. In 
the prophets, poets, and sages, the word often has a 
transformed meaning, but nowhere so clearly as here 
are we told what that meaning is. It is here the sacri- 
fice of a guiltless one, to keep the singular, who by volun- 
tarily entering into and bearing the pains of the guilty, 
puts himself sympathetically into a position to be their 
true religious teacher and ethical guide. 1 Prof. Cheyne, 
who, in his commentary on Isaiah, defends the tradi- 
tional view of chapter liii., practically forsakes his 
ground when he admits that the asham or guilt-offering 
has efficacy only for him who offers it. Christ, then, 
could not by offering himself as an asham save the 
world. Only as redeemed and redeemer suffer together, 
can they hope to be saved together. The servant must 
be " mystically identified with all Israel," and with 
the whole world, in fact. For the mission of the ser- 
vant to the world is clearly emphasized in a number 
of passages. 2 

1 Schultz, O. T. Theol., ii. p. 433, note* 

2 xlii. 1-6, xlix. 1-7, liii. 11, 12. 



164 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

6. Not only does 2 Isaiah spiritualize the idea of 
sacrifice, but the law also is given a transformed and 
exalted place. It is interpreted with great freedom, 
and given a purely spiritual and ethical content. It is 
identified with the divine and imperishable element in 
Israel's religious history, it is righteousness and truth, 
and not legalism nor formalism. The personal element 
still lives in the law as its vital principle. It is not a 
mere compend of commands and prohibitions, but it is 
still one with the prophet who declares it and the God 
from whom it proceeds. Even when the nation is dead, 
and the prophetic voice is hushed, the law is the pledge 
and promise of a resurrected nation. The law is the 
pedagogue to lead the world to God, but it is also much 
more than a mere usher, for to 2 Isaiah the law of the 
Lord finds its fullest expression in the living voice of 
the Lord's prophets and righteous servants. 1 

7. This servant of Jahveh, therefore, according to 
2 Isaiah, may be defined and thought of as possessing 
the characteristics of a true prophet. He is in every 
way, by experience and spiritual endowment, fitted and 
made ready for his arduous task. He is clothed with 
the spirit of God. His mind and heart are quickened 
by the divine love. He is made docile and tender. 
He is made strong and persevering. He knows that 
he will be despised and rejected, that his own people 
will fail to appreciate his service, and look upon his 
work with ingratitude, and even disgust. But he 
knows also that his preaching is right, and that God 
is with him. He knows that God must punish, and 
that he seems to punish in wrath. He knows that his 

1 Isa. xlii. 4, 21; li. 4, 7. . 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 1 65 

sinful brethren ought to expect wrath and not favor. 
While, therefore, he receives upon his own shoulders 
the stripes that have been called forth by others, he 
does not receive them in wrath or in rebellion, but in 
sympathy. He feels the wrath of God more keenly 
than his sin-hardened brothers, but he knows that that 
wrath is not directed against him. He knows that the 
father who chastens his child inflicts worse pains upon 
# himself, and that God never punishes willingly. The 
servant has learned the- most important lesson, that, 
from the very nature of society, good and bad have to 
rejoice and suffer together to a very large extent. If 
the noble, the gifted, and the righteous do not take 
their brothers with them to the summits of the perfect 
civilization, it is because there is something lacking in 
their nobility and their righteousness. And so the 
unknown prophet, at times, seems to censure the ser- 
vant for want of breadth of view and want of faith, and 
for seeming lack of success in his mission. Yet the 
servant makes no complaint. He knows that con- 
sciously he has done no wrong. And he submits wil- 
lingly to his fate, for his presence among those who 
rebel at the punishment incurred, softens them, melts 
them to tears, and brings the divine mercy and forgive- 
ness near. By no means does the servant suffer as a 
substitute for his people. They, too, suffer with him, 
as he with them. But his suffering with them and 
sympathy for them, and his constant pleading with 
them to repent and turn to righteousness, because de- 
served punishment is the medicine of the soul, places 
him in the best possible position to be their teacher, 
and puts them in the best position to learn his lessons. 



1 66 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

8. And the better the servant comes to know the peo- 
ple he has saved, the more is he impressed with the fact 
that they, too, as well as he, have placed their soul as 
an offering for sin, that they, as well as he, make vica- 
rious atonement for others. After all, that exegesis 
which sees in Isaiah liii. the whole people, and not the 
kernel nor a martyr merely, gives the chapter to the 
world to-day on its richest side. The wicked suffer 
vicariously as truly as the righteous. And they suffer 
for the righteous as truly as the righteous do for them. 
They are forced to bear in their lives the evil results of 
a form of society which they did not create, but into 
which they were born as into an inheritance, and from 
which they could not wholly free themselves. By fill- 
ing up these gaps they hold society together, and create 
the environment which makes the righteousness of the 
righteous possible. If there is one thought above an- 
other that dominates the Second Isaiah, it is the thought 
of the absolute dependence of the members of society 
upon each other. And in a society in which all are 
members one of another, any progress that is confined 
to classes, or cliques, or parties, or denominations, is 
but make-bejieve. It is sham progress. And ever and 
anon he who has pushed his way to the top must turn 
around, seem to take a backward step, and become the 
servant of all. He must put his soul an offering for 
s sin. Only thus can society see its seed, and prolong its 
days. If this is not done ruin and disaster are inevi- 
table. The divinity of the servant, then, consists in, 
the fact, that "he would rather suffer and die than 
save himself by separating himself from the people, 
and leaving them without a seed of a nobler future. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. l6j 



Hence this suffering is endured in faith, love, and 
hope." 1 

The mission of the servant, then, as we have seen, 
is clearly portrayed in the great unknown prophet ; it 
is to redeem Israel, to make atonement for the sins of 
the world. The righteous servant " suffers as a part of 
Israel ; he bears the sins of his nation." 2 He does not 
do this unwillingly, or because forced to it. He does 
not do it "because of a mysterious decree of God" 
(Schultz), to purchase salvation or to symbolize Christ, 
but he does it voluntarily, because he sees that it is his 
duty and mission. 3 It is not a revealed but a natural 
duty, one which arises from the very structure of the 
social organism, for we are members one of another. 
And may we not agree with John Tillotson, who, in 
speaking of "a natural duty," continues, "and because 
it is so it is of a more necessary and indispensable 
obligation than any positive precept of revealed reli- 
gion." There is nothing irrational, nothing rational- 
istic, in this view of atonement. Indeed, it is because 
it is all so natural, because the mission of the servant 
was so lofty, broad, and simple, that it never com- 
mended itself to the Jews. They were unable to 
grasp its meaning. A natural and simple, yet pro- 
foundly spiritual, view of atonement was not what the 
Jews or the post apostolic church wanted. And they, 
therefore, sought to evolve out of this passage some- 
thing unnatural, irrational, and inhuman, an outrage 
alike upon God and man. 

i Schultz, O. T. Theol., vol. i. p. 317. 

2 Kuenen's Religion of Israel, ii. 134. 

3 Isa. xlix. 4-7; 1. 5, 6, 10; liii. 1-12. 



1 68 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 



II. 2 ISAIAH IN THE LATER JEWISH AND EARLY CHRISTIAN 
LITERATURE. 

9. Isaiah liii. was not at the outset in any real sense 
a Messianic passage. The Davidic king did not suffer 
for his people according to the early prophets or the 
later psalmists. This is readily admitted to-day by 
nearly all Biblical scholars. 1 We are explicitly told in 
the New Testament, in fact, that a crucified Christ 
was to the Jews a stumbling-block. 2 Josephus and 
Philo in the time of Jesus had not identified the ser- 
vant in Isaiah with the Messianic hope. And the Jew, 
in Justin Martyr's Trypho (150 a.d.), while admitting 
that the Messiah must suffer, denies that he must suf- 
fer death on the cross. It is evident that in the year 
25 a.d. no one had thought of, or at any rate empha- 
sized, Isaiah liii. as a Messianic passage. Yet, on the 
other hand, the opinion that the righteous atone for 
the sins of the wicked had received a more or less 
complete development. Aside from that atonement 
for sin which was brought about by good works, by 
study of the law, or by prayer, there was believed to be 
an especial atoning power in suffering and in death. 
At just what date the Jews made these thoughts a part 
of their popular religious belief it is impossible to say, 
but certainly in the time of Christ there was much of 
this speculation in the air. It* was affirmed that com- 
plete atonement without suffering is impossible ; that 

1 See Toy's Judaism and Christianity, p. 330, note; and also Schiirer, 
ii. 184, for this opinion. 

2 1 Cor. i. 23. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 1 69 

whoever goes forty days without suffering loses the 
blessings of the world to come. Sickness atones for 
lesser sins, for the graver ones death alone can make 
complete satisfaction. Even for murder, death makes 
atonement, provided the death sentence be passed by 
the court, or by the sacred lot ; or provided death be 
voluntarily incurred, or come direct from the Deity, 
as, for example, by the falling of a tower, or by a thun- 
derbolt. So far one's sufferings and death avail to free 
his own soul from misery and death in the world to 
come. Even more striking are the passages in later 
Jewish writings, in which the righteous make atone- 
ment for their less virtuous companions. The ideas of 
Isaiah liii. are repeated, elaborated, and emphasized. 
It is affirmed that "our father Abraham could atone 
for all the follies and lies which Israel shall commit in 
this world." 1 Moses, it was said, was buried beside 
the house of Peor, that his grave might atone for the 
sins of Israel with Baal Peor. On the other hand, one 
righteous man while living " can still the anger of God 
over the whole race." This atoning power of the liv- 
ing righteous extends even unto the dead. And, on 
the other side, children who die in infancy, that is, sin- 
less, have power to atone for the sins of their ungodly 
parents. A passage which seems to run counter to this 
circle of ideas affirms that " it is a divine punishment 
upon the wicked when God removes from them the 
righteous, for now there are none to appease his anger 
when it grows hot." This passage certainly does not 
necessarily imply that the righteous must suffer for 
their people in order to save them. In fact, the thought 

1 Weber's Altsynagogale Theologie, S. 313. 



I70 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

in 2 Isaiah was too spiritual and lofty for the later 
Jews, and it was only by slow degrees that the early 
Church obtained possession of its true meaning, a pos- 
session which it afterwards buried under a heap of use- 
less dogmas. 1 

10. Neither Jews nor Christians, then, in 35 a.d., 
were looking for a Messiah who would make atonement 
for his people. And further, it becomes evident from a 
study of this passage in the early Christian and later 
Jewish literature, that the Jews and Christians worked 
out the Messianic signification of this passage to- 
gether. Let us look at the converging lines which at 
first dimly suggest, and at last enforce, this view of the 
passage. 

Again and again, even in the early literature, it is 
implied that the road to the Messianic kingdom lies 
through suffering. The Messiah cannot come until 
the people repent and turn to righteousness. But to 
Micah and to Jeremiah the sins of the people appear 
so deep and vile, that restoration is impossible without 
the death, that is, the captivity, of the nation. Punish- 
ment must precede forgiveness and blessing. What is 
here said of the people is said of the anointed of Jah- 
veh in some of the Psalms and later prophets. Accord- 
ing to Zech. ix. 9, the Messiah is just and saved, 
but he is also lowly or afflicted. 2 And Zech. xii. 10 
seems to speak of the murder of an anointed king from 
whom the people had expected great blessings. Doubt- 
less, earlier than this, and perhaps just prior to Nehe- 

1 Cf. Prov. xxi. 18, where the wicked are a ransom for the righteous. 

2 The same root is employed which occurs in Isa. liii. 4, " stricken, 
smitten of God and afflicted." 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 171 

miah's visit to Jerusalem in 444, the Twenty-second 
Psalm, entitled a Psalm of David, gave a vivid descrip- 
tion of the afflictions of the Lord's anointed. The 
Messianic king cries out, " My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me ? " Only after the fall of the royal 
house and the ruin of the nation could a temple poet 
put into the mouth of David the words of Psalm 
Twenty-two. The Messiah is there made to say, 1 — 

" But I am a worm and no man; 

A reproach of men and despised of the people. 
All they that see me laugh me to scorn; 
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 
He trusted Jahveh that he would deliver him; 
Let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him." 

Here it is plainly taught that the Messiah suffers with 
his people. He does not suffer for them, but he suffers 
with them. And he encourages them with the thought 
that Jahveh has not cast them off forever. 

" He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; 
Neither hath he hid his face from him." 

Not only is the Messiah to suffer with his people, ac- 
cording to the Psalmist, but in a later Psalm 2 than 
that just quoted, the David whose afflictions have been 
so great is called the Lord's Servant. The way seems 
open now for a running together of the conceptions of 
the Messiah who suffers, and the servant of Jahveh who 
makes atonement for the sins of his people. Yet the 
identification was not made. Nor was it made upon 
the publication of Psalm Eighty-nine, though this poem 

1 Cheyne's Bampton Lectures for 1889, p. 231. 

2 Psalm cxxxii. Cheyne, op. cit. p. 52. 



172 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

several times calls David the servant of Jahveh, and 
describes him and his afflictions in language closely 
parallel with Isaiah liii. 1 The New Testament takes 
up this thought, left incomplete in the Old Testament 
and Apocrypha, in a series of passages in which Jesus 
is called God's servant. 2 The full significance of these 
passages has been too often ignored. In the Septua- 
gint translation of 2 Isaiah, the expression " servant of 
Jahveh" is rendered " child of God" or " child of the 
Lord." 3 This is in the Greek a very peculiar expres- 
sion ; and we find it in several notable passages in the 
New Testament, and in the early Christian literature, as 
for example, the " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." 
In none of these passages is the Messianic dignity of 
Jesus made prominent, yet he is identified by this ex- 
pression with him who makes atonement for the world 
in Isaiah liii. 4 

In fact, the strongest hint towards a union of 2 
Isaiah's hope with the Messianic hope, in so far as the 
latter was spiritual and real, is, as Prof. Mitchell has 
suggested, to be found in Isaiah's own book. In a 
notable passage in lv. 3, the prophet unmistakably 
transfers the Messianic blessings from the family of 
David to the righteous kernel of the nation. 5 

1 Compare Psalm lxxxix. 29 with Isa. liii. 10; lxxxix. 38 with liii. 2, 
10; lxxxix. 42 with liii. 3; lxxxix. 45 with liii. 8. The Psalm is a peculiar 
one; lxxxix. 1-37 might have been written when a member of the 
Davidic dynasty was on the throne. Verses 38-51 imply clearly that there 
is no longer any anointed of Jahveh, i.e., the Jews have no king. 

2 Greek (nmq). 3 Matt. xii. 18. 

4 See Acts iii. 13, R. V. margin, for a list of these passages. 

5 See Schultz, O. T. Theol., vol. ii. 421; and also Psalms cxxix. 1-3; 
xliv. 17-26; and Psalm lxxiii. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 1 73 

But the pre-Christian Jews could not bring them- 
selves to believe that their Messiah, the anointed of 
Jahveh, from the old and noble family of David, was to 
make atonement for their sins by his death. How 
he could and must suffer with them in their national 
calamity they were able to see. But that the " Son of 
man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister," 
they were as slow to learn as were the Master's own 
disciples. 

Nevertheless, in the light of the various connecting 
links between Isaiah liii. and the Messianic ideas, it 
has become common to admit that, while Isaiah liii. is 
not primarily Messianic, yet, the early Church en- 
larged its meaning in full accord with the laws of 
historical development. 1 This is doubtless true, and it 
may even be true that in the time of Christ some Jews 
fully appreciated the thought of the great prophet. 
Says Prof. Schultz, "To the saints who saw most 
deeply into the meaning of Scripture at the time of 
Christ, this picture of the suffering servant of God 
necessarily disclosed the innermost secret of the divine 
ways of salvation." 2 Yet, on the other hand, it must 
evidently be admitted that the disciples did not fully 
appreciate the deep spiritual significance of Isaiah liii. 
till forced to it by the death of the Master. 

n. The history of Isaiah liii. in the New Testament, 
in fact, presents a series of remarkable phenomena in 
support of this. Nearly the whole of the chapter ap- 
pears in the New Testament, and some verses several 
times. This seems to argue that it was a favorite 

1 Cheyne's Commentary on Isaiah, vol. ii. p. 223. 
. 2 O. T. Theol., vol. ii. p. 430. 



174 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

chapter and familiar to all. But how often is the sub- 
ject matter either wholly or in part misunderstood ! 
Matt. viii. 17 quotes the crucial verse, not, however, 
applying it to the vicarious sufferings of Christ, but to 
the miraculous cures wrought by him wherein he "took 
our infirmities and bore our diseases. " This is an idea 
wholly alien to the thought of the Hebrew prophet, 
and an idea which entirely robs the original of all its 
ethical and spiritual significance. Just as little does 
Mark xv. 28 contain evidence of the real meaning of 
Isaiah liii. But even if it did, the passage lacks manu- 
script authority, and has dropped out of the Revised 
Version altogether. Luke xxii. 37 seems at first sight 
to furnish more satisfactory evidence. The words " he 
was reckoned with transgressors " are put into Jesus' 
own mouth. Yet they occur in a very troublesome 
section, which is peculiar to Luke and at variance with 
the expressed words of Jesus, and with his doctrine of 
non-resistance. 1 For this reason, and not because the 
section contains the quotation from Isaiah, the verses 
(35-38) have been regarded unauthentic by Schleier- 
macher, de Wette, Ritschl, Holtzmann, and others. 2 

In Acts viii. 26-40 we are told of the conversion of 
an Ethiopian eunuch through a conversation with the 
apostle Philip, which was founded upon Isa. liii. 7, 8. 
But how Philip treated his text, or in what he found 
the reference to Christ to consist, we are not told. As 
the Christian doctrine concerning this passage was 

1 Matt. x. 9; v. 39. 

2 Meyer's Commentary defends the genuineness of the verses, but 
denies that Jesus intended to say that the words originally applied to 
himself. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. \J$ 

more or less peculiar, we must obviously go elsewhere 
for the first beginnings of that treatment of it. For 
in this section the Christian interpretation is already 
presupposed. 1 

In following this line we seem, in fact, to be on the 
wrong track, and we must turn aside and seek Jesus' 
interpretation of Isaiah liii. in those passages in which 
he refers to his work in language of his own. 

12. What, then, was Jesus' own view of the signifi- 
cance of his sufferings and death ? This question is not 
easily answered, for our Gospels were manifestly writ- 
ten after the doctrine of the atonement had been fully 
developed by Paul. And, seemingly, the Gospels must 
have been colored here and there by the Pauline inter- 
pretation. It is maintained by some scholars, for exam- 
ple, that Jesus, in his teaching, attached no doctrinal 
significance at all to his coming sufferings and death ; 
that he simply saw that these were inevitable if he 
would establish his cause among men; that only by 
proving that he was willing to die for his gospel could 
he convince men that his gospel was true, and bind 
them to himself in the bonds of a pure religious fel- 
lowship. It is affirmed that Jesus was a true prophet, 
and that he held the prophetic view of salvation. God 
is merciful and tender, willing to forgive every soul 
that comes to him ; and he asks neither sacrifice nor 
offering, but only the broken and contrite heart. If 
Jesus did not teach such a doctrine of salvation, so 
these scholars argue, it is clear that many of his para- 
bles are but very imperfect similes indeed. Says Dr. 

1 Smend, A. T., Rels. Geschichte, S. 262, N. is unfortunate in quoting 
the passage as a proof of a correct understanding in N. T. of Isaiah liii. 



176 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Cone, " Man is represented in the teaching of Jesus as 
in immediate relations with the Father. The latter 
needs no propitiation, and for the former no sacrifice 
is required but that of his selfish passions. The man 
who would save his life must lose it. No other life is 
offered up as a substitute for his. ... In Golgotha 
there is no substitution. Each soul must pass through 
it, following the great Leader." * 

But there is a circle of passages in the synoptic Gos- 
pels that seems to run counter to this interpretation. 
In Mark x. 45, and Matt. xx. 28, Jesus is made to say 
that he came to "give his life a ransom for many." 
This passage is cut out of our Gospels by some of the 
best scholars, as an anticipation of Paulinism, and on 
the ground that it is incongruous with Jesus' own teach- 
ing. 2 Luke, in the parallel passage, and Matthew in 
a similar context elsewhere, do not give this as the 
meaning of Jesus' life of self-sacrifice. 3 On the other 
hand, these passages are defended by Wendt, Ritschl, 
and others, and interpreted strictly in the light of their 
contexts, and of those ethical ideas of sacrifice which 
prevailed among the Jews. Ritschl affirms that the 
Greek word rendered " ransom " goes back to the 
Hebrew word which means a covering, or " means of 
protection ;" and then he affirms that the phrase "for 
many " refers to the whole clause, and not to the " ran- 
som " merely. The words, therefore, refer to the will- 
ing death of Christ. He yields up his life for many ; 
to prove to them the superiority of the spiritual over 

1 The Gospel and its Earliest Interpretations, p. 113. 

2 Toy's Judaism, p. 353. Cone's Interpretations, p. 114. 

3 Matt, xxiii. 1 1 ; Luke xxii. 26. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. IJJ 

the physical, and to put into practice his own doctrine, 
that he who would lose his life shall save it. 1 Suffering 
and death are inevitable, and only as they are borne in 
patience and hope, are they the soil upon which the 
true religious life can develop. So, also, Wendt affirms 
that we must understand this saying of Jesus, not in 
the light of the later doctrines of Paul, but in the light 
of Jesus' own utterances ; and if so, then the sense 
must be that he gives his life as a ransom, "that is, as a 
means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many." 
Wendt, in fact, affirms that this difficult passage finds 
its best explanation in the invitation to the toil-worn 
and heavy laden of Matt. xi. 28-30. 2 

In a different series of passages Jesus is made to 
speak of his " blood of the covenant which is shed for 
many." If these passages are genuine; Jesus must 
have referred to the covenant sacrifice of the Old Tes- 
tament. But this sacrifice is not for sin ; it is merely a 
symbol which makes the covenant binding. 3 And the 
reference is, obviously, also, to the new covenant men- 
tioned by Jeremiah, in which formalism is done away, 
and the law of God is written on the heart. 4 

To return then to those passages in the sayings 
of Jesus concerning his mission, in the light of which 
these should be interpreted, we obviously find that, to 
use the language of one of his sacred biographers, 
Jesus " grew in knowledge " in this regard, as time 

1 Ritschl's Recht. u. Versohnung, vol. ii., pp. 69, 73, 85. 

2 Wendt's Teaching of Jesus, vol. ii. pp. 229, 230. 

3 Ex. xxiv. I— II. 

4 Jer. xxxi. 33, 34, with Mark xiv. 22-24, and parallels; and Heb ix. 
15-21. Possibly, indeed, 1 Cor. xi. 24 is the original of these. Wendt's 
Lehre Jesu, vol. i. p. 344, and Ritschl, op. cit. 167. 



178 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

passed. His conception of the kingdom of God as 
spiritual rather than temporal, and the growing oppo- 
sition of the Pharisees, must have turned his mind to 
those portions of the Old Testament in which the 
sufferings of the righteous were portrayed. Already, 
so early as th£ temptation period, unless the tempta- 
tion was a mere farce, Jesus was confronted with most 
momentous problems. He felt called upon "to preach 
the acceptable year of the Lord/' But the Messianic 
ideas in his age were legion, and, as a rule, they were 
mercenary, materialistic, and unethical. Those that 
were popular flattered the popular desires : those that 
were moral and spiritual were not popular. Which of 
these various Messianic ideas should he choose ? The 
Pharisaic ideal would bestow upon him " all the king- 
doms of the earth and the glory of them." And to 
the church of Christ's time all other Messianic ideas 
were heresy. This ideal had real attractions, yet 
Jesus did not choose it, he chose rather to work in 
natural and spiritual ways. But he foresaw that this 
meant suffering, persecution, and perhaps death. Great 
prophets had always suffered persecution from this peo- 
ple. The Old Testament was full of examples of this. 
And there was one example of a " Servant of Jahveh," 
who had willingly put his soul as an offering for the 
sin of his people. Jesus saw that he too must suffer 
for his people. But when he spoke of the necessity 
of this to his disciples they were shocked. Peter, in 
fact, refused to understand. But Jesus insisted that 
his true followers, like himself, must bear the cross, the 
symbol of martyrdom. Truth is found only of those 
who toil for her and suffer for her. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. 1 79 

The religious teacher must ransom truth by dying 
for it, he must redeem it by his life, it costs him his 
blood. But, after all, it is not truth that he longs for 
so much as it is souls that shall love it. So he may say 
he gives his life as a ranso*m for his fellows, that they 
may, like him, choose truth, and, at the same time, learn 
the lesson of human suffering. 

In the light of the quotations from Isaiah liii., in the 
Synoptics, and of Jesus' own view of his sufferings 
and death, we may rest satisfied in the opinion that 
there was an old and well-founded tradition that Jesus, 
in some way, saw that his own life story was told in 
Isaiah liii. But those who have given us this most 
interesting bit of information, show us that they them- 
selves did not understand Isaiah liii., nor Jesus' use of 
it. On the other hand, the sayings of Jesus, as a whole, 
confirm the belief that he did understand the great 
Unknown Prophet, and that he applied his thought 
to himself in a purely rational and deeply spiritual 
manner. And it is in the Fourth Gospel that we find 
the highest and most satisfactory confirmation of this 
opinion. 

13. The Gospel of John is permeated through and 
through with that view of the atoning work of Christ 
which flows naturally out of 2 Isaiah. It has been 
often pointed out that John's Gospel lacks entirely the 
forensic, sacrificial idea of Jesus' death. Says Dr. Cone, 
with characteristic clearness and force, "He offers no 
atoning sacrifice, and his death is not an humiliation, 
but a gateway through which he passes out of the dark- 
ened world into his glory. He does not suffer to satisfy 
the divine righteousness, and does not buy off sinful 



l8o BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

men by the payment of the precious ransom of his 
blood, but he draws them to himself by the attraction 
of his personality, and to those who receive him he 
gives power to become the children of God." 1 

The reference in John i; 29 to the "lamb of God 
that bears away the sin of the world," can hardly be 
explained of the paschal lamb, as Luther and Reuss 
have contended. For the blood of the paschal lamb 
was a mere symbol and had nothing to do with sin. 
Nor can we agree with Ritschl 2 that the reference is 
not to Isa. liii. 10, because of the fact that the atone- 
ment is for the whole world. For 2 Isaiah clearly gives to 
the servant a mission to the whole world, and no other 
sacrifice in the Old Testament, in fact, does possess such 
universality. Furthermore, the whole picture of the 
work of Jesus, as contained in the Logia of John, agrees 
with the ideals of the work of the Servant of Jahveh as 
given by 2 Isaiah. 

With John i. 29 agrees 1 John iii. 5. Several other 
passages, notably in the writings of Paul and his follow- 
ers, are possibly references to Isaiah liii. Some of 
these may be based upon a correct understanding of it ; 
but their first reference seems rather to be to the Levit- 
ical sacrifices, or to the prophetical ideas underlying 
those conceptions. 3 In 1 Peter ii. 20-25, on the other 
hand, is to be found the most concise and clear, and at 
the same time most correct, application of the thought of 
the unknown prophet to the work of Christ to be found 
anywhere in the New Testament. So significant are 

1 The Gospel and its Earliest Interpretations, page 374. 

2 Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, S. 67, 8. 

3 Rom. iv. 25; 1 Cor. xv. 3; Heb. ix. 28; Rev. v. 6. 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST. l8l 

these words that they fitly appear here as the close of 
this discussion. Comment upon them is unnecessary. 
The author says to his readers, "If when ye do well 
and suffer, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with 
God. For hereunto were ye called: because Christ 
also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you 
should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was 
guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, 
reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened not; 
but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: 
who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the 
tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto 
righteousness: by whose stripes ye are healed. For 
ye were going astray like sheep ; but are now returned 
unto the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls." 

III. APPENDIX ON SECOND ISAIAH. 

I. Several recent authors incline to the opinion that 
there are three main authors of Isaiah xl.-lxvi. Second 
Isaiah wrote chapters xl.-lv., except the sections named 
below, and lived toward the close of the exile. Later than 
this the "Servant of Jahveh fragments" were written 
and based upon 2 Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Job. These 
are found in xlii. 1-4; xlix. 1-6; 1. 4-9; and lii. 13-liii. 12. 
To* 3 Isaiah belong chapters lvi.-lxvi. These three 
books were put together at a very late date by an 
editor who made changes in chapters xliv., xlvi., xlviii., 
and 1. 10 fol., bringing them into closer harmony with 
3 Isaiah. 

Smend has recently (1893) come to the support of 
Duhm in the main details of this analysis. Certainly 
the so-called "Servant of Jahveh fragments" hang to- 



1 82 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

gether, and are much more pronounced in their univer- 
salism than the other parts of Isaiah. 

2. From Isa. Hi. 13 to liii. 12 we seem to have a dia- 
logue, in which Jahveh, the prophets, and the people 
are the speakers. 

In lii. 13-15 Jahveh calls attention to his servant who 
is to be exalted and lifted up. In liii. 1-3 the prophets 
complain that the people have not listened to them ; 
they have not accepted the work of the servant in their 
behalf. In liii. 4-6 the people admit that the servant 
has really been smitten for them, and that they are 
healed with his stripes. Then Jahveh replies in liii. 
7-9 that, though they have in a measure recognized his 
mission, they have not appreciated him. They have 
made his grave with the wicked and the transgressors. 
In the remaining verses, 10-12, the author, or Jahveh 
speaking through him, sums up the results. The ser- 
vant was made a sin offering. And because he died 
willingly for his people he shall redeem his people, and 
have a portion with the great. 

Smend thinks the servant was an individual, not 
the whole people, a sick and persecuted prophet, in 
fact, "like Jeremiah, but more than he." With the 
view that the servant was sick agree Duhm and many 
Jewish and Christian scholars on the most natural ren- 
dering of liii. 3. (See Revised Version margin.) 

Instead of "rich," in verse 9, most scholars now think 
we should read " transgressors," a change of a single 
letter in the Hebrew text. Verse 10 is very perplexing 
on any hypothesis. Duhm says it is not metrical, as is 
the rest of the chapter, and accordingly does violence 
to the text. He cuts out the word asham y so that the 



FOR THE SUFFERING CHRIST, 1 83 

servant is no longer a guilt-offering, though he does, 
according to Duhm, suffer vicariously for his people. 1 

3. The Jews were not able to understand this chap- 
ter. Rashi says that "this prophet speaks constantly 
of the whole people as one man." But the great ma- 
jority of the later Jews saw here the example of a suf- 
fering righteous man merely, and after the time of 
Christ, if not before, a reference to the Messiah. The 
Babylonian Talmud calls the Messiah a leprous or sick 
one, on the authority of Isaiah liii. 

The following selections from the Targum Jonathan, 
an Aramaic translation of the Bible, show how the 
later Jews understood the passage. The Targum be- 
gins in Hi. 13, " Behold my servant Messiah." But by 
twists and turns the Messiah's sufferings are gotten 
rid of. The strongest passage is "He will become 
despised" (liii. 3). 

Verse 4. "Then for our sins will he pray, and our 
iniquities will, for his sake, be forgiven, although we 
were accounted stricken, smitten from before the Lord 
and afflicted." 

Verse 6. "All we like sheep had been scattered, 
we had each wandered off on his own way; but it was 
the Lord's good pleasure to forgive the sins of all of us 
for his sake. 7. He prayed and he was answered, and 
ere even he had opened his mouth he was accepted: 
the mighty of the peoples he will deliver up like a sheep 
to the slaughter and like a lamb dumb before her 
shearers; there shall be none before him opening his 

1 Duhm asserts, in fact, that the Hebrew of liii. 10 is absolutely un- 
translatable. It is worthy of note also that the speaker in 10 is hardly 
the same as the speaker in n, 12. 



1 84 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

mouth or saying a word. 8. Out of chastisement and 
punishment he will bring our captives near. ... 9. 
He will deliver the wicked into Gehinnom, and those 
that are rich in possessions into the death of utter de- 
struction. ... 10. But it is the Lord's good pleasure 
to try and to purify the remnant of his people, so as to 
cleanse their souls from sin : these shall look on the 
kingdom of their Messiah, their sons and their daugh- 
ters shall be multiplied, they shall prolong their days 
and those who perform the law of the Lord shall prosper 
in his good pleasure. ... 11. By his wisdom he will 
hold the guiltless free from guilt, in order to bring 
many unto subjection to the law; and for their sins 
he will intercede. 12. Then will I divide for him the 
spoil of many peoples, and the possessions of strong 
cities shall he divide as prey, because he delivered up 
his soul to death, and made the rebellious subject to the 
law." 



CHAPTER VIII. 



BACK TO BOTH TESTAMENTS FOR THEIR 
REC0NC1LIA T/OAT 



" When j having shown the divergencies, contradictions, and errors in the Bible, 
we go below the surface to the substance of things, we are obliged to admit that 
the Bible has not only a human, imperfect, transitory side, but also a divine, 
perfect, unchangeable, eternal side. Some have wished to see only the former, 
others only the latter side. To be fully in the right we must recognize that one 
exists as well as the other P 

PlEPENBRING. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BACK TO BOTH TESTAMENTS FOR THEIR RECONCILIATION. 

I. In the foregoing discussion the Messianic idea, 
the sacrificial idea, and the suffering servant idea were, 
by conscious purpose, kept distinct. It was believed 
that each one of these lines of thought bore fruitage 
in a New Testament doctrine, which gained in clear- 
ness by being kept distinct from the others. 

Along three distinct lines, therefore, to set the purely 
ethical one side, the Old Testament prepared the way 
for Christ. And along each one of these lines we find 
a better picture of the work and nature of Christ in 
the pre-Christian revelation than in the prevailing exe- 
gesis of the Church which has dominated the New 
Testament, and forced the Old into its mould. The 
Old Testament doctrine of Messiah led the world to 
expect a Saviour who would be a Saviour in virtue of 
his spiritual leadership. The doctrine of sacrifice and 
Paul's treatment of it represents Jesus as a Saviour, 
because he has by his death on the cross forever done 
away with all arbitrary and fictitious barriers which 
men have thought separated them from God, and by 
his work among men as Son of God he has shown that 
as he, so God cares more for sincerity and uprightness 
than for sacrifices. Lastly, the Old Testament idea 
of the suffering righteous, who suffer with and for 

187 



1 88 BACK TO BOTH TESTAMENTS 

their people, and the later Jewish notion of the One 
servant of God in particular, who is regarded as a sin- 
offering, set before us the doctrine of vicarious atone- 
ment in a way at once so profound, so natural, and so 
rational, that no one can reject it ; an idea which comes 
to our own age with trenchant force. Here we are 
led to expect a Saviour who suffers and dies with and 
for his people, who gives up his life that men may take 
his truth and live. The New Testament, interpreted 
in the light of the Old, comes to our age with a Christ 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities ; with a Christ 
who is most truly divine, because most truly human ; 
who is most truly Saviour, because he was most truly 
unselfish. 

2. Yet the question will arise, arid it deserves an 
answer, whether Jesus was in reality the Messiah, the 
Christ of God, in whose very person the two Testa- 
ments are locked together. 

There is certainly a tendency among liberals to-day 
to discard more and more the use of the title which the 
early Church gave to Jesus. It is argued with much 
learning and much justice that the Messiah of the Jew, 
the Messiah foretold in his sacred Scriptures, has not 
yet come. The Reform Jews have ceased to expect 
such Messiah, and the Orthodox Jews, with much show 
of reason, stoutly deny that Jesus of Nazareth can lay 
any claim to such title. 

If we turn to the New Testament for help in the 
solution of the problem, we seem to get little satisfac- 
tion. We are given results, but not the processes that 
led to them. Or, rather, we cannot but note many 
missing links between an Old Testament prophecy and 



FOR THEIR RECONCILIATION. 1 89 

its purported New Testament fulfilment. On the basis 
of the Gospel tradition alone there is some ground for 
the supposition that the claim to Messianic dignity was 
an after-thought of Jesus, — that he was drawn into it 
by the enthusiasm of his followers, while it was his 
own purpose to make no such claims. However that 
may be, it is manifest that the whole apostolic doctrine 
is built upon the belief that Jesus was the promised 
Messiah. If Jesus was not such Messiah, Christianity 
was misnamed, and Jesus ought not to be forced to 
wear a title which he does not desire, and which mocks 
history. Professor Pfleiderer, in his account of the 
conversion of Paul, intimates that when it was sug- 
gested that Jesus was the fulfilment of one and another 
of the prophecies, long supposed to be Messianic, Paul 
would have no means of refuting the claim. At any 
rate, Paul did not refute the claim. And in Pauline 
theology the whole Old Testament looks forward to 
Christ. "All God's promises are yea and amen in 
Christ Jesus. " The whole apostolic theology falls if 
Jesus is not Christ. 

3. Rash and fantastic claims on the part of many 
have caused some very broad statements to be made 
within the limits of the Orthodox churches. Dr. Briggs 
has given up many prophecies long counted as Messi- 
anic, and the others he has interpreted in such a way 
as to very materially change the picture of the Messiah 
presented. Hengstenberg, Oehler, Riehm, and West- 
cott admit that often there is a wide gap between the 
intention of the original writer and the New Testa- 
ment application of his words. Nitzsch laid it down 
as a rule that a prophecy must not foretell the future 



190 BACK TO BOTH TESTAMENTS 

accurately; it would upset human affairs, paralyze 
effort, and introduce iron-bound necessity where free- 
dom reigns. So, then, "prediction must not disturb his- 
tory." Hengstenberg, Havernick, and Tholuck accept 
this rule. So also does Kueper. And he is at great 
pains to prove that the prophecies did not meet with 
exact fulfilment. Modern criticism places the date of 
the Book of Daniel subsequent to the events it nar- 
rates, and admits its historical accuracy. Kueper says 
it was written before the events it describes, and, bound 
by his rule, goes to great lengths to prove that it was 
not literally fulfilled. Such are some of the eccentrici- 
ties into which an effort to defend a certain kind of 
predictive prophecy has betrayed scholars who, in every 
other respect, show that they are in their right mind. 
It has been asked whether Professor Briggs is speak- 
ing seriously when he mentions three phases of proph- 
ecy, — the dream, the vision or ecstatic state, and the 
enlightened spiritual discernment. Evidently he is, and 
does believe that God spoke to men in dreams. Neither 
would he admit, with David Hume, that this is the 
same as for the same men to dream that God spoke 
to them. 

The failure of all these scholars to find a method of 
defence that attacks the problem seriously, and estab- 
lishes the desired thesis conclusively, is shown by the 
ever recurring confession that a new discussion is 
necessary. 

The questions that arise and ask a settlement are 
legion. What is the relation of Old Testament to 
New ? How far does prophecy anticipate the gospel ? 
To what extent, or in what sense, if at all, was Jesus 



FOR THEIR RECONCILIATION. 191 

conscious of his Messiahship ? Making due allowance 
for the subjective element, had God's dealings with 
Israel a definite end, and was that end Jesus Christ ? 
In the light of a broad, free survey of the history, did 
or did not God's dealings with Israel find a raison 
d'etre in their own environment ? The problem is 
more than half solved when we have succeeded in 
asking the right questions. 

4. Again, if we would not be misled, we must ex- 
amine each prophecy in the light of its own age, as well 
as in the light of its fulfilment. Kuenen has done this, 
and concludes that "the New Testament Christ is 
another than the Messiah of the Old Testament." 
Professor Briggs has been over the same ground, has 
studied the same prophecies, and these are his words : 
"Hebrew prophecy springs from divinity as its source 
and ever-flowing inspiration, and it points to divinity 
as its fruition and complete realization. None but God 
could give such prophecy; none but God can fulfil such 
prophecy. The ideal of prophecy and the real of his- 
tory correspond in Him who is above the limits of time 
and space and circumstance, who is the Creator, Ruler, 
and Saviour of the world." Again he says, "In Jesus 
of Nazareth the key of the Messianic prophecy of the 
Old Testament has been found. All its phases find 
their realization in his unique personality." 

The method must, to a certain extent, account for 
these divergent conclusions. Left to the Old Testa- 
ment alone, and with no " stream of tendency " behind 
us, we would inevitably reach Kuenen's conclusions. 
Adopting the method of Professor Briggs, and being 
favorably inclined towards the opinions of the New 



192 BACK TO BOTH TESTAMENTS 

Testament writers, the opposite conclusions would, no 
doubt, be the more natural. But, as Dr. Riehm has 
pointed out, this method is, in a measure, a. false one. 
To start out with our eye upon the goal means that we 
will see the goal and nothing else. We will have a 
feeling or a very imperfect knowledge of the ground 
we are on, and a very vivid picture of the end aimed at. 
If the question is raised, "What did the Holy Spirit 
mean by this prediction? " the answer comes, "Go to 
the fulfilment and see." Such a method cannot be the 
true one. The most that it can reveal to us is the rela- 
tion of prophecy to its fulfilment. " What we do not 
learn until the fulfilment cannot be in the prophecy 
itself." Only when prophecy and history are kept dis- 
tinct, and studied with relation to their own environ- 
ment, can sure results be obtained. We have no right 
to read into a prophecy what we find only in the 
fulfilment. 

Suppose, then, an impartial criticism decides that 
Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jews, shall we give up 
the word Christ, or spell it with a small c as Westcott 
and Hort do the Greek word in their edition of the 
New Testament ? Shall we give up the word Christian 
and call ourselves by some other name ? Assuredly, 
No. And for two reasons. 

6. In the first place, no idea, and no word as the 
symbol of an idea, is given up by one generation to 
another in the same form in which it was received. 
Some ideas are purified gradually, while the symbol 
remains the same. " Spirit," meaning originally wind, 
illustrates the point. Other ideas have had a birth 
in the memory of man and yet demanded new sym- 



FOR THEIR RECONCILIATION. I93 

bols, or old ideas have grown too large to be embodied 
in a single word and have split asunder. So long as a 
word has content it remains. Nor does the fact that it 
originated in false notions compel us to discard it. If 
we turn to the process of word-making, we discover that 
words are not created de novo, but old words are taken 
up, rechristened and rehabilitated, and given back to 
the world. From an ideal point of view it was espe- 
cially fitting that Jesus should be called Christ. If, on 
the one hand, his personality purified the conception of 
Messiah, the popular enthusiasm for an expected de- 
liverer, in its turn, assisted his teachings to win the 
recipient hearts of his fellows in a way that they could 
not otherwise have done. So, then, J. H. Crooker may 
say, with truth, that, " although Jesus was not such a 
Messiah as the prophets described, nor as the Jews ex- 
pected, yet this general Messianic expectation did much 
to shape his ministry and clothe his person with au- 
thority. Every great character must work in connec- 
tion with some great sentiment. Every great leader 
must somehow enter into and possess the popular im- 
agination." 

7. That this claim of Jesus to the title of Christ 
is not founded upon a mere sentimental idealism, is 
shown by another consideration, which those who oppose 
his Messiahship are too prone to ignore. The later 
prophets themselves see that the earlier Messianic 
ideas cannot meet with a literal fulfilment, that the 
national existence must come to an end, that a spiritual 
Israel will take the place of the temporal Israel, and 
that God will make a new covenant with his people and 
write his law on their heart. The temple service will 



194 BACK TO BOTH TESTAMENTS 

pass away. The theocracy, as it was understood in the 
former age, will be forgotten. This new covenant will 
be an everlasting covenant. 1 To be sure, following 
these annunciations, are predictions of the Messiah as 
faulty as any. But the reason is obvious. While the 
prophet promises a new covenant, he continues to write 
and think in the categories of the old. It could not be 
otherwise. It is not his description of the new order, 
but his promise of it, which is significant. One con- 
sideration which has helped to blind the Christian 
world to this fact, is the name that was given to the 
New Testament. It should have been called the New 
Covenant. While those under the New Covenant are 
not warranted in making the Messianic prophecies 
mean to their contemporaries anything more than the 
obvious sense of the words will allow, they have a 
right to demand that the new covenant there prom- 
ised shall reflect its light backwards upon them and 
illuminate them. The writer of Hebrews voiced one 
of the sublimest truths of history when he proclaimed 
that "they without us could not be made perfect. " 
Had the Old Covenant made no promise of a New, a 
failure of Jesus to realize the Jewish ideal of Messiah 
would deprive him of a just right to the title of Christ. 
But the promise of a new covenant, placing religion 
upon a higher basis, must of necessity render the old 
ideals valueless as literal representations. If Jesus sus- 
tains the same relations to the New Covenant as the 
ideal of the Messiah did to the Old, then Jesus is the 
Christ of God. 

8. For the moment, then, I purposely reverse the 

1 Jer. xxxi. 31-34. 



FOR THEIR RECONCILIATION. 1 95 

thesis which this book was written to prove. I set out 
to show that one must go to the Old Testament to 
understand, in all their richness and freedom, in all 
their lengths and breadths, heights and depths, the 
teachings of Jesus and his apostles. I conclude with 
the opinion, equally well established by the facts, as it 
seems, that only a Christian can understand the Old 
Testament ; that only he who has profited by the 
Christian revelation can read between the lines with 
sufficient inerrancy to discern God's sublime plans in 
the Hebrew history. Despite the sublimity of the 
God of the Jewish people, their whole religion aimed 
to bring God and man near to each other. And that 
goal was reached when Christ took upon himself for 
our sakes the form of sinful flesh, and by righteous- 
ness and by communion with God overcame the flesh 
and death, and brought life and immortality to light. 
The Christ took upon himself, or took to his heart, the 
sorrows and sins of the whole world, as if they were 
his own. He shared, by sympathy and actual suffering, 
the world's misery, and even its punishment. And by 
this he showed us that the deepest and truest feeling 
of all religion is the feeling of solidarity and sympathy, 
— the vicarious conscience and heart and life ! 



CHAPTER IX. 



BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR ITS 
SOCIOLOGY, 



" To check the enormous waste of resources, to calm the rhythmic billows of 
action and reaction, to secure rational adaptation of means to remote ends, to 
prevent natural forces from clashing with human feeling, to turn physical 
phenomena to human advantage, these are some of the aims of sociology P 

Lester F. Ward. 



CHAPTER IX. 

BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR ITS SOCIOLOGY. 

I. One reason why sociology is coming to have so 
absorbing an interest for the educator, the philanthro- 
pist, and the churchman, is the fact that science, ethics, 
and religion are coming to be recognized as co-ordinate 
fields of human endeavor, each of which is a sine qua 
non of progress. Each one is but a branch of the 
greater science of humanity. The religious teacher, 
who is inclined to be fair, is forced to admit that 
religion cannot be legitimately defined, so as to in- 
clude all the forces that make for progress. He can 
be shown men who are very religious, and yet who 
are without interest in things intellectual, and without 
high ethical motive. The educator, in proportion to 
the breadth of his culture, is wont to admit that his 
calling places an undue emphasis upon the head, and 
that he cannot predict the future till the heart is 
trained also. The ethical culturist may include social 
ethics, and yet leave something out of his science that 
he ought to put into the man. The merely moral man 
is not a lovable man. Just as man has intellect, feel- 
ings, and will, all of which should be trained, so society 
has, roughly speaking, science, religion, and business ; 
and it is only when these exist in their true relations, 
that we have a perfect society. Just as intellect, feel- 

199 



200 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

ing, and will merge into each other by imperceptible 
gradations, so that it is only by a violent process of 
dissection that we can handle them separately ; so the 
faculties of society are similarly bound together. Lit- 
erature may be science, it may be religion, it may 
be business. The creation of literature may also be 
classed in either of these three categories. 

2. Sociology is the science that co-ordinates all the 
special social sciences, and it finds its right to be in 
the fact that true progress cannot be measured by the 
advance in any one branch of society. Just as an age 
of religious revivals may be an age of weak morals, 
so an age of irreligion may be an age of great mechan- 
ical progress. The mechanical progress may, in turn, 
usher in, or aid in ushering in, a better religion, and so 
on. How to introduce harmony into the working of 
these various forces, how to prevent the unnecessary 
clashing of interests, and lessen the zigzag of our 
onward march, are some of the age-wide aims of the 
social philosophers. That a panacea has been dis- 
covered is not claimed. The social scientists, like the 
physical scientists, are not altogether agreed among 
themselves. But upon one thing they are agreed, 
and that is, that the new science contains more of 
the elements of progress than any other, and in a 
better order for the performance of the work of him 
who would reform society. 

3. Especially is it true that the Scriptures have been 
narrowed in their usefulness from being studied so ex- 
clusively on the side of their religion. Of supreme 
value to us all is the religion of the Bible. Against it 
I make no charge. But what I here affirm is this, that 



FOR ITS SOCIOLOGY. 201 

there are other essentials to our soul's salvation besides 
religion. Religion, especially the Biblical religion, pre- 
supposes a mind capable of intelligent judgment and 
choice, it presupposes a heart capable of deep and con- 
stant affection, it presupposes a life-aim, a chosen voca- 
tion filled with its daily duties. Are we born into all 
these, ready made ? Not by any means ! Yet religion 
is as dependent upon these as they are upon religion. 
As Mr. Lecky has somewhere said, "It is impossible 
.to lay down a railway without creating an intellectual 
influence. It is probable that Watt and Stephenson 
will eventually modify the opinions of mankind almost 
as profoundly as Luther and Voltaire." Now, the Bible, 
recognizes the truth of this solidarity of progress that 
Mr. Lecky has here so forcibly depicted. Especially is 
this true of the earlier Biblical books, those that were 
written before the distinction between sacred and pro- 
fane, religious and secular, had arisen ; and those later 
books that outline and emphasize the functions of the 
church-state presuppose an essential oneness of these 
institutions. The New Testament aims not at the sal- 
vation of individual souls merely, but at the perfect 
society. It applies to this world the best features of 
the Messianic age of the prophets. All through the 
Scriptures it is tacitly admitted that religion is but 
a branch of a wider science, which we to-day call 
sociology. 

4. The study of any ancient society should proceed 
upon the basis of a careful and accurate understanding 
of its literature as illustrated in the history of older 
peoples, the influence upon it of contemporary history 
at home and abroad, and finally the influence of that 



202 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

literature upon later generations. This latter point 
may at first seem unnecessary. But in reality it is 
not so. Histories, like those of the Hebrews, Greeks, 
or Romans, have been very potent in all the subsequent 
progress of civilized peoples. And there is a decided 
tendency to find in the past the justification for any 
advance step made by ourselves. Often the past has 
been misinterpreted in order to furnish this justifica- 
tion. The story of the influence of the Old Testa- 
ment, for example, upon modern history, is the story 
of the interpretation of that history in the given 
time. 

Has the Old Testament, with its culmination in the 
New, anything worthy our heed if we would under- 
stand aright the past and future of our social order ? 
As Hebrew history and religion were constructed and 
construed by the older scholars, they were more unique 
than helpful. They threw the matter into hopeless 
perplexity by baffling all attempts at order and growth. 
God seemed to have no plans himself, and he delighted 
in setting at naught the plans of his servants. All 
this has been changed in the last few years. There 
is a rapidly increasing unanimity among scholars as to 
the general trend of Hebrew development. As it is 
reconstructed the Hebrew history becomes the best 
at hand for the study of the problems raised by the 
modern social movements. 

Of the importance of their contribution to the 
world's progress the Hebrews were themselves fully 
aware. How far they looked into the future we can- 
not say. Neither can we assert that they had any 
definite idea as to just how their God was to become 



FOR ITS SOCIOLOGY. 203 

the recognized God of the universe. But by an insight, 
that no merely naturalistic theory of history can ex- 
plain, they saw the future triumph of their religion 
and morality. 1 One of the surest signs of genius is 
the possessor's assurance that he has it. The Hebrew 
national self-consciousness, and the justification which 
history accords to this, is the strongest proof of the 
divine inspiration and mission of this people. 

Another reason why Biblical Sociology can lay es- 
pecial claims upon our attention is the fact that the 
Bible is a book that is well known. Many influences 
conspire to hold it in high esteem. It enjoys an 
authority which in civilized lands no other book 
enjoys. As such its teachings command attention. 
Even those who do not appeal to it as authority for 
themselves continue to use it as an authority for 
others, because it is considered as such by the people 
generally. A circumstance that renders the Hebrew 
people especially interesting to the sociological student 
is also the fact that we have in them, more than in 
any other people, a typical history of progress. Those 
peoples that are constantly suffering national reverses, 
and, after each of these, readily intermarry with stran- 
gers and adopt new and alien forms of thought and 
worship, baffle us. The new elements upset all our 
calculations. The very exclusiveness of the Hebrews, 
which was their weakness in some regards, was their 
strength in others. 

In the Hebrew history, culminating in the New Tes- 
tament, we have an example of a remarkably pure de- 
velopment of a national idea from within. The ideal 

1 Deut. iv. 8. 



204 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

of the Israelites was early formed, and the best of 
them never, amidst all their reverses, wholly aban- 
doned it. This ideal was a growing ideal. And so 
carefully written is their history that the main details 
of the progress, and the principle causes of it, are not 
hid from us, but lie ready to hand. This may now be 
said without hesitation, though a few years ago it might 
have been disputed. 

5. Before going farther, then, let us give a brief out- 
line of the order in which the various Biblical books 
should stand, when arranged chronologically. First we 
have the older narrative portions of the Pentateuch, 
Judges, and Samuel. Then come the first writing 
prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah. 
With Jeremiah should be classed the Book of Deuteron- 
omy, discovered, if not written, in the time of Josiah 
(622). On the basis of the theological notions of Deu- 
teronomy, Judges, and parts of Samuel and Kings, were 
rewritten. At the beginning of the exile comes Eze- 
kiel, and at its close the 2 Isaiah. Then follow Zech- 
ariah (1-9) and Haggai and the building of the second 
temple (520). Then Ezra and Nehemiah, and the pub- 
lication of the completed law (444). Large parts of 
Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, as also portions of 
Joshua, were now written for the first time. J6el and 
Job belong after Ezra, and Proverbs and the Psalms 
received their final form a little later still. Chronicles 
come about 300, Daniel about 164, and Esther still 
later perhaps. As thus dated the Hebrew history fol- 
lows an intelligible course of development. And aside 
from the large amount of critical, historical, and lin- 
guistic evidence in favor of the order is the fact that 



FOR ITS SOCIOLOGY. 205 

there is no Biblical evidence against this view of it. 
We do not hesitate to set the Jewish tradition aside 
when it says that Ezekiel was written by the men of 
the great synagogue ; why should we cling to it when 
it attributes to Moses or Isaiah or Samuel words which 
they themselves do not pretend to have written ? 

As thus chronologically arranged, the Bible is the 
best text-book to be had upon the subject of sociology. 
To be sure, it needs to be interpreted in the light of 
the best science of the present, and to appear at its 
best the Bible must be expounded by a man of the 
keenest intellect, the purest morals, and the tenderest 
sentiment. But the Bible deserves to be interpreted 
by just such men, for these men are directly or in- 
directly the children of the Book and of its religion. 
It would be unfair to the Bible to ignore the Christian 
scholarship which it has aided in producing, and judge 
it in the light of the error and superstition of the past, 
thinking to do honor to it by heaping upon it epithets 
which it never claimed for itself, — epithets which rob 
it of its sweet humanity, its noble individuality, and its 
lofty genius. No, it is as interpreted in the light of 
the Christian freedom and Christian criticism that it 
has produced, that the Bible is to-day the best text-book 
on sociology. It is the broadest, most impartial, most 
fertile in suggestion of all the books. It contains a 
complete history of an important branch of the race, 
from the very lowest beginnings to a position of emi- 
nence in the civilized world. Minds of varying degrees 
of insight have struggled to outline for us, in the 
pages of the Bible, the causes of the successes and 
reverses of their people. The intensely religious man, 



206 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

who makes all hinge upon the obedience or disobe- 
dience to the divine commands, has his say. But the 
man of practical wisdom, who takes account of natural 
causes, and inclines to place the chief stress upon 
them, is also allowed to speak in the pages of the 
Bible. The lawyer, who insists upon taking the peo- 
ple no faster than they can go, is there. The Old 
Testament contains a half-dozen civil codes of growing 
complexity, each building upon the preceding, casting 
away what has become useless, adding higher motives 
to the old commands, and here and there enjoining 
a new one. We see the priest, who is satisfied if the 
people pay their dues, and we see by his side him 
who is truly zealous for the Lord's service. Above all 
we see the idealist, the preacher of righteousness, the 
prophet toiling laboriously on, in season and out of 
season, attacking with vigor whatever has about it the 
smell of corruption, whether in private life or public, 
in church or in state, at home or abroad. This same 
prophet is really the creator of the law, and the re- 
former of the ritual. It is he who wins for his people 
an ever truer conception of God ; it is he who reveals 
more keenly the true relations of a man to his neigh- 
bor. It is he to whom the Lord speaks, and when God 
will speak his prophets cannot hold their peace. 

Biblical Sociology, then, is sociology with a soul. It 
cannot be a bare natural history of human progress. 
It is dynamic, as well as static. It is prophetic, as well 
as historical and critical. It cannot be content with 
what has been or what is ; it is equally concerned 
with what ought to be. Biblical Sociology sees God 
in history everywhere, and the highest duty of man is, 



FOR ITS SOCIOLOGY, 207 

accordingly, to become God's co-worker. Therefore, 
what ought to be, it is man's bounden duty, with God's 
help, to accomplish. 

Biblical Sociology is a wider science than Biblical 
Theology. Religion itself is a branch of sociology. 
The Bible takes it for granted that social progress is 
not altogether conditioned by religious advance. But 
religious advance is conditioned by the progress of 
society as a whole. Therefore it is a mistake to con- 
fine our study of the Bible to its religion. If we would 
seek the causes of human progress we must study 
sociology ; and if we desire to know the whole lesson 
that the Bible has for us, we must study the various 
phases of social life that the Bible reveals. 

6. The Biblical Sociology begins not with man nor 
with society, but with God and the creation. After 
the visible creation is complete God continues to work 
in man. The mere forming of a living being in the 
human shape is the smallest part of the creation of man. 
Only by a long course of training is man made in the 
image of God. The second man is a murderer. Soci- 
ety develops its worst traits first. Thus it appears that 
the first society was a failure, and a deluge blots it from 
the face of the earth. 

The second trial is more successful. Individual hab- 
its multiply and become contagious customs, the frozen 
deeds of the early race ; these introduce uniformity 
and make progress possible. Ideas of kinship and of 
kindness bind certain families together, and we have 
the permanent beginnings of a social order. Natural 
affection is so extended as to offer the right to live 
"to all within the tribe." The life of the tribe is a 



208 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

common possession, and is under the control of a chief 
or patriarch. 

The earliest law is that of retaliation. It declares 
that eye shall go for eye and life for life. This law 
checks the rash and the cruel with the fear of death; it 
inspires the timid with a sense of their duty to them- 
selves and to their brother clansmen. 

7. Up to this time there is no man and wife in our 
sense of the word. The period of infancy of the off- 
spring has held the parents together for a longer or 
shorter period ; but there are no restrictions upon con- 
jugal infidelity. There are relics of pairing seasons, of 
group marriages, and of polyandry and polygamy. Mo- 
nogamy is the prevailing form of union, but the evils 
of the other forms are not recognized. 

The male parent not only owns his wife and may 
sell her at will, but he owns his children, and has the 
power of life and death over them. The slave is still 
more absolutely the property of the master, while the 
laws of hospitality are, on the other hand, exceedingly 
fraternal. 

Gradually all this changes. The family comes to be 
regarded as a divine institution. The union of one man 
with one woman, and for life, is clearly seen to be the 
divine order. Love is recognized as the bond of union, 
and its everlastingness is beautifully told. Wedded 
love becomes the symbol of the divine love which was 
sealed by an everlasting covenant. The husband repu- 
diates the idea of owning his wife. He asks her to call 
him not "lord (owner) " but " husband. " The value of 
her good name is recognized, and her maternal qualities 
are duly praised. The child is ruled by love now. Ar- 



FOR ITS SOCIOLOGY. 209 

bitrary law has given way to mutual understanding; 
force, to persuasion. Fatherhood becomes the synonym 
of protection, guidance, and kindly counsel. The slave 
is now the owner of his own body. A master who mu- 
tilates the body of his slave has trespassed upon the 
rights of another ; and the slave may demand in dam- 
ages the price of himself and go free. The slave is 
also given one rest day out of the seven, and is accorded 
some of the privileges of the religion. 

8. The first government is that of the parent. The 
father of the family keeps all the younger members 
with him. The daughters are married into other fami- 
lies, and the sons marry and bring their wives home. 
The necessity of guarding against wild beasts or hostile 
tribes keeps the family together. This becomes at last 
a tribe, and then several tribes unite and a nation or a 
people is formed. In the tribe the father of the largest 
family is chief, and the other fathers are elders or ad- 
visers. In the federation of tribes the strongest chief 
becomes the judge or king, and so on. As the society 
becomes more complex the functions of government 
multiply. At the outset the judge or king is ruler, 
priest, and prophet. Later there are recorders, gen- 
erals, and statesmen, judges, priests, and prophets. 
Custom is turned into law. The power of the ruler 
is limited. The influence of the prophet increases. 
Wars grow less frequent and the soil is more faithfully 
tilled. Plunder gives way to taxes and tributes. 

9. In the early days, land was as free as air, and no 
one thought of owning it. The land across Jordan and 
south of the ten and a half tribes belonged to Chemosh. 
Palestine belonged to Jahveh, and his people shared it 



2IO BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

in common. In a desert country the first real property- 
is a well, or cistern. As the people multiply and the 
shepherd becomes an agriculturist, it is seen that it is 
best to divide the land among the people. But still the 
land is cheap, and each man is expected to own a piece 
of land. So firmly fixed was the idea of man's near- 
ness to the soil, that each man's estate was declared 
inalienable. Mismanage as he might, he must not be 
allowed to deprive his children of their patrimony. 
Unfortunately, however, this law became a dead letter 
as society became more complex. 

10. Labor was dignified in all the Jewish law. Each 
man had learned a trade while young. Each was able 
to support himself. The idler was despised. Learned 
leisure was not thought of. " Labor is happiness," 
said the Jew, and he proved his words. The nation 
whose literature has declared labor a curse, has done 
most to prove it a blessing. The Greeks despised labor. 
The Roman freeman, who had not a coat to his back, 
was above labor. " Only a slave," said he, " should 
toil." What a weight of meaning for all ages in the 
contrast. 

Commerce was regarded a doubtful good. Produc- 
tive labor alone has the full sanction of the law, the 
prophets, and the sages. But the Jews did not heed 
their John Ruskin. And they have become the middle 
men of the world. 

ii. Meanwhile, the settled, peaceful life has its pecu- 
liar dangers. The rich grow richer; and the poor, 
poorer. The ancestral estates become alienated. That 
form of society in which it was planned that every fam- 
ily should own a strip of soil gives way to one in which 



FOR ITS SOCIOLOGY. 21 X 

there are beggars and tramps. Hebrews of pure blood 
sell their wives, their children, and themselves into 
slavery. The rich grow harsh, cruel, and arrogant. 
The poor are not only debarred from the rights of cit- 
izens, but the privileges of religion are also denied 
them. All this calls for a moral reformation. The 
prophets cry out against oppression. The rich cannot 
have allowed these pleas to pass unheeded. Nehemiah 
refused to draw his salary, because the people are poor ; 
and he feeds the laborers at his own expense. There 
is a growing conviction that neither riches nor poverty 
is the ideal ; both have their peculiar temptations. The 
religion comes to place charity and righteousness in 
the same category. 

12. A growing emphasis is placed upon education. 
None of the early Bible stories turn upon the ability to 
read and write, and it is probable that writing was not 
very common in the days of the first writing prophets. 
Education consisted in committing to memory the tra- 
ditions. In the laws of Deuteronomy we note a remark- 
able change. The people are now supposed to be able 
to read. Portions of the book are posted in public 
places. The parents are exhorted to teach their chil- 
dren the law of the Lord. The king is to have a copy 
of the civil law near at hand, and he is to read it. From 
the days of Josiah, the Jews began to pay more atten- 
tion to education for its own sake. The wisdom litera- 
ture was becoming common. This was practical rather 
than theoretical or religious, and presupposed a love of 
knowledge for itself alone. All this comes to a climax 
in certain portions of Job and Proverbs, and in the 
Apocryphal Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach. 



212 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

New elements of a truly noble nature are gradually 
imported into the ritual which at first was so full of su- 
perstitions. The social value of the coming together 
into the presence of the Lord is magnified. Many 
psalms glorify the blessings of the communion of men 
with each other and with God. Together they exalt 
their daily life, and inspire each other with noble 
thoughts. They sing together of the sweetness of the 
home life, and of the nobility of a pure conscience. 
The mellowing influences of common thoughts on a 
common destiny are charmingly portrayed. 

13. But what renders all these subjects so full of in- 
terest, what gives unique value to all the lessons the 
Bible brings us, is the divineness of its religion. No 
doubt this had very humble beginnings. But, however 
that may be, any true estimate of it must take it at its 
best. Where many modern sociologists are weak, the 
Bible writers are strongest. They see the divine plan 
in history. Their sociology is not static, but dynamic. 
They do not look into the past only, but into the fu- 
ture as well. " See, in order to foresee," is their motto. 
And they never tire of affirming that if we would see 
God in the future, we must look for him in the present; 
if he has spoken to us in the past, he has a yet better 
message in the present. Isaiah complains to his people 
of their undue conservatism. They are contiuually ap- 
pealing to what Jehovah said to their fathers, and ignor- 
ing what he is now saying to them. All the prophets 
believed in a living God. He was as near to them as 
he had been to their fathers. They made their religion 
a living force, not a dead creed, not a system of theol- 
ogy. It is the belief in a living inspiration, in the real 



FOR ITS SOCIOLOGY. 21 3 

inner strength and goodness of society, as such, that 
renders the message of the Biblical authors so full of 
help and consolation. It is the triumph of the divine 
in them that has made them our teachers in religion 
and in sociology for all time. 

To the believer in the Biblical religion who unites 
with his faith a strong conviction of the general truth- 
fulness of modern progress, Biblical sociology will pres- 
ent many strong claims to the title of science. 



CHAPTER X. 



SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES OF 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 



" This age may be best characterized as the age of criticism, a criticism to 
which everything must submit. Religion, on the ground of its sanctity, and 
law, on the ground of its majesty, often resist this sifting of their claims. But, 
in so doing, they inevitably awake a not unjust suspicion that their claims are 
ill-founded, and they can no longer expect the unfeigned homage paid by reason 
to that which has shown itself able to stand the test of free inquiry P 

Immanuel Kant. 



CHAPTER X. 

SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES OF THE 
OLD TESTAMENT. 

I. What, in the days since the dawn of Christian- 
ity, have men, whose opinions are worth heeding, be- 
lieved the Old Testament to be ? This is a question 
which possesses a living interest, and any. impartial 
investigation in this field is sure to yield rich results. 

We find, in the first place, that the Orthodox Jews 
accept their Scriptures as a complete and sufficient 
revelation of the will of the Lord their God, contain- 
ing a fully developed moral code, and a ritual, to com- 
ply with which is to save the soul. They are blind 
followers of the letter of the law. Nothing can be 
learned, in fact, outside the Hebrew Bible and the 
Talmud. The work of the Orthodox Jews upon their 
Scriptures has been almost wholly conservative. They 
have done nothing to aid the modern reconstruction of 
their history. Avoiding altogether modern scholarship, 
they rather prefer to revel in the speculations of the 
Talmud. They still believe, with the Jewish authors of 
the early Christian centuries, that the law existed in 
the depths of the divine nature before time was, that 
it is in very truth the eternal image of the spiritual 
being of God, that it is identical with heavenly wis- 
dom, and that God's love goes out to it willingly and 

217 



2l8 SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES 

spontaneously in tenderest affection. The law is, to 
the pious Jew, the daughter of God, in whom God loved 
himself as in his own image. By one writer the law is 
made to say, " God begat me from eternity as the first- 
ling of his way, as the first beginning of his work. ,, 
And, according to another writer, it was said that God 
himself spends the first three hours of the day in the 
study of the law. 

The law is, to the Orthodox Jew, God's only revela- 
tion of salvation. Piety is love for the law ; the essence 
of religion is to live according to the law, and it will be 
the essence of religion for all time. The Jews are the 
people of the law, and the study and practice of the 
law insure the presence of God in their midst. The 
prophets were but inspired commentators of the law, 
and the oral tradition was its authentic and God-given 
interpretation. 1 

The Reform Jews, on the other hand, are thoroughly 
in touch with modern aims and ideals. They are prot- 
estants in that they reject or thoroughly sift the Rab- 
binical traditions, and return to an independent study 
of the Bible itself. They hold to no hard and fast 
creed, but gladly accept the results of modern science, 
philosophy, and historical criticism. Their reverence 
for the Old Testament is akin to that of the liberal 
Christian for the New. And some of the best work 
on the Jewish Scriptures in our day is being done by 
Reformed Jews. 

2. The New Testament idea of the Old Testament 
is the Orthodox Jewish idea, with such modifications as 
the new elements in Christianity would naturally neces- 

1 Weber's Altsynagogale Theologie, SS. 16, 34, etc. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 219 

sitate. It must not be forgotten that the Old Testa- 
ment was the only Bible that Jesus and the apostles 
possessed. And it proved to them a constant source 
of inspiration and hope. It furnished the basis for a 
pure moral and religious life, and, above all, it became 
a powerful weapon in the hands of the early Christians 
in their controversies with the Gentiles. It is to be 
expected, then, that the New Testament writers will 
hold the Old Testament in the highest esteem. 

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, says he came 
not to abrogate the law of the prophets but to fulfil 
them ; that is, he came not to set aside the law as hav- 
ing no authority (KaraXvuv), but to live up to it, obey it, 
and so fulfil it (irX-qpovv). In the same context he con- 
tinues, one " i " or one piece of a letter shall not pass 
from even a word of the Old Testament, until all its 
mission for righteousness and the kingdom of God is 
accomplished (iravra yev^rat). 1 The thought seems to be, 
if the words are really those of Jesus, that the Old 
Testament retains its authority until the truth finds a 
higher authority in the new heart, and in the momen- 
tum of a righteous life (vs. 20). The Old Testament, 
then, has its supreme value, not in the fact that it fore- 
tells the Messiah and prepares the world for him, but 
in that it teaches by precept and example a form of 
righteousness which will endure till heaven and earth 
pass away. The fulfilment of a law is its abrogation 
only to him who, by obedience, is ready to put aside the 
milk of the word and partake of the solid meat. 

1 Matt. v. 17-20 is a confused and confusing section. Weizsacker, 
Hilgenfeld, and others, may be right in saying that vss. 18, 19, are not 
words of Jesus. 



220 SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES 

Prof. Edward Caird says, that, when Jesus spoke of 
the kingdom of God as resembling a kernel of wheat, 
which, put into the earth, multiplies by dying, he " gave 
a clearer expression to the idea of development than it 
had ever before received/' 1 Equally significant with 
the passage referred to by Caird and in the same direc- 
tion are the words of Jesus recorded in Matt. xix. n, 
"All men cannot receive this saying." This certainly 
implies that Christianity is not primarily a doctrine, 
merely as such, but a higher type of religious life, 
founded upon the Old Testament, and supplementing 
its ideal, but never setting it wholly aside. 

The continued usefulness of precepts of varying de- 
grees of ethical and religious completeness is well illus- 
trated also by a passage in the Teaching of the Apostles, 
vi. 2. " If indeed thou art able to bear the whole yoke 
of the Lord, thou wilt be perfect : but if thou art not 
able, do what thou canst" (o Svvrj rovro notei). 

This I believe was the view of Jesus. The Old Tes- 
tament possesses permanent value, because there are 
always those in society who are sufficiently hard of 
heart and dull of hearing to be helped by it ; while, on 
the other hand, Jesus certainly taught that the higher 
commands possessed authority for those who were able 
to receive them. 

Paul seems to have at one time believed in the Old 
Testament in a more technical way than Jesus ever did. 
When he accepted Christianity, however, he sought to 
set aside this technique, though without being wholly 
able to do so. He speaks at one time in favor of the 
law, and at another time against it. And it is by no 

1 Evolution of Religion, vol. i. p. 25. 



\ 

OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 221 

means clear in every instance just what his meaning 
may be. If we could affirm that, when he spoke against 
the law, he had in mind its ritual and merely formal 
morality, and that, when he spoke in its praise, he was 
thinking of its ethical and ideal character, the difficulty 
would be solved. But Paul nowhere tells us that he so 
speaks, and, further, Meyer is doubtless right when he 
says that "the distinction between the ritualistic, civil, 
and moral law is modern." 

The New Testament, as a whole, does not regard the 
Jewish revelation as confined to our present Old Testa- 
ment. On several occasions the Apocryphal Old Tes- 
tament is quoted as having authority, and various 
references in the New Testament seem to be to books 
now lost. In a creative period a hard and fast theory 
of inspiration is out of the question, and the New Testa- 
ment writers show great freedom, both in the character 
of the authorities employed, and in the manner of using 
them. 1 . 

3. The early Christian Church accepted almost with- 
out change the Orthodox Jewish view of the Old Testa- 
ment. While they rejected the Talmud and the Tra- 
dition, they followed the Jews in the great body of 
their interpretations. One important difference, of 
course, was that of the belief about the Messiah. The 
Jews and Christians were practically in agreement as to 
the number and meaning of the Messianic passages. 
But the Jews denied that these were fulfilled in Jesus 

1 Cf. Heb. i. 3 and Wisdom vii. 26. Jas. i. 9, 19 and Ecclus. iv. 29, 
v. 11. Heb. xi. 35, 36 and 2 Mace. vi. 18 -vii. 42. Heb. xi. 37 and 
Ascension of Isaiah. Jude 9 and the Assumption of Moses. Jude 14-16 
and the Book of Enoch. See also the non-Biblical names in 2 Tim. iii. 8. 



222 SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES 

of Nazareth. In the third century of our era the Chris- 
tians looked upon the Old and New Testaments as sui 
generis. The scriptures of other peoples were, by the 
majority, believed to be purposely base, vile, plagiaristic, 
and harmful. But the Biblia, or books of the Old and 
New Testaments, were believed to be the complete word 
of God to men. 

While this was true of the Orthodox Christians, the 
heretical sects looked upon the Old Testament with 
distrust. The Gnostics were, as a rule, opposed to the 
Old Testament. Basilides, to be sure, looked upon the 
God of the Old Testament as indeed the Creator of 
the world. But he was not therefore God, but an angel 
(apx<»v) who presided over the lowest of the three hun- 
dred and sixty-five kingdoms of the ineffable God. 

Marcion {floruit 139 a.d.) likewise held that Jehovah 
was the Creator, but not the God of the universe. He 
saw only the lower and material elements in the Old 
Testament. Even the Messiah of the Old Testament 
is far from the real Christ, according to Marcion. He 
is sensuously and physically conceived, as was Jehovah. 
Naturally, then, the ethical and religious portions of 
the Old Testament are looked upon as external, and 
grounded in law, and not in love. 1 The sect of the 
Ophites went still farther, and pronounced the Old Tes- 
tament immoral, and completely at variance with the 
religion of the Spirit. 

4. Modern writers upon the religions classify them 
in various ways, and by this estimate them. One of 
the most common divisions is that into natural and re- 
vealed. The natural religions are the heathen reli- 
1 Hase's Christian Church, pp. 78 fol. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 223 

gions, or more properly, they are the nature religions 
that are without great prophets, as, for example, Brah- 
manism, and the religions of Greece and Rome. The re- 
vealed religions are the religions that have their origin 
in some great man, as, for example, Mosaism, or Juda- 
ism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and Christianity. By 
another classification the religions are subjective, ob- 
jective, or absolute, according as God is conceived as 
transcending the world, or as immanent in it, or as both 
immanent and transcendent. The pantheistic religions 
magnify the immanence of the divine, as do the Classi- 
cal and Indian religions. Judaism, on the other hand, 
magnifies the transcendence of God. Christianity har- 
monizes the two conceptions. Schopenhauer classifies 
the religions as optimistic or pessimistic, according as 
they look upon life as a good or an evil. Buddhism 
and Christianity are to him pessimistic. Judaism is 
optimistic. God saw all that he had made, and, behold, 
it was exceeding good. 

5. According to Kant, the essence of religion con- 
sists in a belief in God, Freedom, and Immortality. 
Judaism is not clear, theoretically, on the doctrine of 
freedom, and, practically, freedom is denied, and life is 
reduced to a slavish obedience to a written code, liter- 
ally construed. As to the third essential, the Old Tes- 
tament has no positive word, and therefore, for Kant, 
Judaism had no religious faith, because it had no belief 
in a future life. And a polytheism superior to Judaism 
is clearly conceivable. The ethical portion of the Old 
Testament is equally obnoxious to Kant. He seems 
to have looked entirely to the priestly books for his 
estimate, and he naturally finds it making use of igno- 



224 SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES 

ble motives, and summed up in useless forms. He does 
not hesitate to say that it was the aim of Judaism, not 
to establish a theocracy, but to secularize religion, and 
reduce all to a merely civil society. 

Hegel's estimate of the Old Testament has the de- 
fects and the merits of a cast-iron method. At the 
foot of the ladder we have animism, fetichism, and the 
nature religious, pure and simple. At the top we have 
Christianity, the absolute religion. As rungs in the 
ladder we have the religions of Greece, Rome, and 
Jerusalem. Greece looked after the intellect and gave 
us philosophy, beauty, freedom, and humanity. Rome 
looked after the will and gave us purpose, practice, and 
character. The contribution of the Jew was the least 
important of all. He gave us an absentee God, and the 
feeling of sublimity and of dualism. Yet Hegel admits 
that any compromise on the part of the Hebrews with 
the nature religions would have been fatal to the 
contribution which they have made to the spiritual 
consciousness of mankind. They insisted upon the one- 
ness and absoluteness of God. " The content of the He- 
brew conception of God is pure, non-sensuous thought ; 
the relation of the individual to this being is a relation 
to pure thought. . . . The religious service which the 
Jew was called upon to render was accordingly a severe 
and hard one ; it was a service of ceremony and of law. 
The Jews confessed themselves as owing whatever they 
were to the one God, Jehovah ; thus the individual, 
whether person or race, lacked the consciousness of 
independence, freedom, worth. Hence, adds Hegel, 
we find among the Jews no belief in the immortality of 
the soul. The family here possesses the independence 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 225 

that the individual lacks ; it is to the family that, so to 
speak, spiritual substantiality belongs. The worship of 
Jehovah is a worship rendered by the family. The 
state, on the other hand, is foreign to the principle of 
Jewish life and to the legislation of Moses. " * 

Schelling held that the religion of the Old Testament 
was a revealed and spiritual religion, and that Jehovah 
was the true God, but as it arose in an age of darkness, 
it was impossible that it should be other than imperfect. 
It was deeply influenced by the enemies it slew. It 
reacted in an extreme way against some, and was 
unduly drawn towards others. 

The late Prof. Hermann Lotze held the Hebrew reli- 
gion in high esteem. 2 He especially Gommended that 
people for leaving us the only complete history of their 
early mental life. And while he finds in the Hebrew 
language defects which were due to limitations in their 
intellectual interest in various phenomena, he finds 
there also elements which bespeak the deepest ethical 
and religious feeling and aspiration. He says, "The 
descriptive poetry of the Hebrews depicts characters 
and events with the greatest simplicity of expression, 
without the least artificial complication of motives, dis- 
closing everywhere, without reserve, those natural 
springs of action which, as long as the world lasts, 
will be the real ultimate incentives of all that men do." 

Lotze wrote sufficiently late to be influenced in his 
estimate of the Hebrew religion by the critical views 
of his time. Yet it is a wholesome sign, and one 
amounting to independent confirmation, when one of 

1 Morris's Hegel's Philosophy of History, p. 168. 

2 Microcosmus, vol. i. p. 6; vol. ii. pp. 401 fol., 466 fol. 



226 SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES 

Lotze's importance affirms that the Hebrew ethics pro- 
duced the Hebrew religion. "The motive power of 
their development is to be found in ethical ideas, which, 
though not indeed alien to the life of other nations, 
were not the source from which their religious motives 
were derived." 

Lotze was of the opinion that the Hebrews so con- 
ceived of their God as to avoid the philosophical dual- 
ism of which they are often accused. God was wholly 
good, and nothing evil left his hand. But man was cre- 
ated free, and by disobedience he introduced evil into 
the world, while by obedience he might have become 
holy as God is holy. 

6. Newman Smyth, in his " Christian Ethics," lays 
especial emphasis upon the social side of the Old Tes- 
tament religion. The Hebrew ideal of the highest good 
is said to be a social conception. "Abraham's faith 
was a social trust." The Hebrew morality was organic ; 
it looked forward to a society whose members should 
be, in very truth, living members one of another. 
" Family permanence and social stability " were the 
ideals desired above all. 1 " No single solitary soul can 
win life's largest blessing apart from his brethren." 

As emphasizing and at the same time glorifying the 
social side of the Old Testament, may be mentioned 
also Ely's "Social Aspects of Christianity." 2 

Just as fast as crude and indefensible claims for the 
truthfulness of the science of the Bible cease, so rap- 
idly do the scientists come to the support of the writer 
on Christian evidences. Let a scientist approach Gen- 
esis as he approaches Heraclitus or Pythagoras, take it 

1 Page 91 of Christian Ethics. 2 Page 151 fol. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 227 

for just what it is, and estimate it in the light of its age, 
and he cannot but be amazed at the large measure of 
its truthfulness. Haeckel pays to the Hebrew creation 
story a lofty tribute. Von Baer says, " no more lofty 
account has come down to us from early days." Lotze 
says of it, that it is " sublimer than any other, because 
it represents as forthwith existing what the Deity willed 
to be, without weakening the impression of omnipo- 
tence by any mention of intervening physical agencies." 
Inasmuch as the Hebrews were not scientists in any 
sense of the word, Dillmann can account for the origin 
of the first chapter of Genesis only on the basis of an 
inspiration from God. 1 

7. "It is not the object of any Bible student, prop- 
erly so-called," says Myron Adams, " to destroy the 
Bible or to undermine its proper and reasonable influ- 
ence. His object is to discover just what the Bible 
is, and how it came to be what it is." We must be 
aided in our answers to these questions by a broad 
and careful study of human progress in all its branches. 
" All progress is co-ordinate." The church of the 
tenth century could easily accept the doctrine of tran- 
substantiation, because the science of that day taught 
that one metal could be transmuted into another. Bad 
science helped to make a bad theology and vice versa. 

Along with the idea of the extreme almightiness of 
God, grew up the idea that God could make the world 
out of nothing. If God could make something out of 
nothing, he could do other things equally marvellous. 
He could make the Bible out of nothing. He could 
pop the whole Pentateuch suddenly into the mind of 

1 Die Genesis in loco. 



228 SOME ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATES 

Moses, ready made. Moses could give laws for which 
Israel would have no use for centuries. To be sure, 
this isn't the way society moves nowadays. Now it is 
hard to get the laws when we are ready for them. 
Why ? Because we have to make our laws out of our 
needs. We have discarded the idea that the world was 
made out of nothing. It violates a fundamental law of 
thought. When we have been forced from the position 
that the world was made out of nothing, we naturally 
feel impelled to abandon the idea that the Bible was 
made out of nothing. We begin to seek for causes, 
conditions, and opportunities. We study the Biblical 
authors on the human side, we seek to know the secret 
of their inspirations. 

Some of us were brought up to think that the Bible 
must not be studied as are other phenomena and other 
books. But when we search for the cause of all this, 
we find it goes back for its origin to an age of intro- 
spection, as opposed to a later age of the careful 
study of nature. We have learned to study nature, to 
study it as a work of God. And we study nature with 
perfect freedom, criticising and correcting. We have 
come to look upon the work of man as that of perfect- 
ing what the divine spirit is aiming at in the universe. 
Now, to hold this idea of God's world, and at the same 
time to deny the right of man to deal thus with God's 
book, is to reveal a very confused state of mind. It is 
to show to the world that while we have learned our les- 
son, we have not yet learned the meaning of it, " If God 
had authentically written every word of the Bible, if he 
had caused all the printing and arrangement of it, and 
the very binding itself to be done in heaven, it would 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 229 

be still open to men for their inspection and criticism. " 
But the Bible was not so produced. It came to us 
through human media, — much more then is it our duty 
to inspect and criticise it, and adapt it to our own 
moral and religious needs. 

8. Another fact worthy of consideration is this, that 
the Biblical writers were specialists. Their abilities 
and inspirations in one direction do not assure us 
that they are equally gifted in other directions. In- 
deed, all analogy is against this. A man's excellence 
in one department of learning is often coupled with 
defects in other departments. There is nothing in 
inspiration that can guard a Biblical author from these 
human limitations. Along with this comes also the 
fact that the whole race was once far behind where it 
now is in knowledge. The Bible has all the marks of 
its age and its nation stamped upon it. " It came into 
being as a human production as really as anything else 
which has ever become extant among us." This search 
for natural causes has been marvellously fruitful in re- 
vealing the hidden meaning of many Biblical passages. 
And the frank admission that the Biblical writers were 
religious specialists, making no claim to more than com- 
mon abilities and common honesty in other domains of 
culture, and, above all, basing their highest claim to be 
heard on the value of their message to their own age ; 
the frank admission of these facts, I say, must bring at 
last all the great minds into sympathetic relations with 
the Old Testament and its noble religion. 



CHAPTER XL 



EVOLUTION AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



" Until the problem has been stated in its most dangerous form, all solutions 
of it must be partial and inadequate. They must leave, after all, an inex- 
plicable surd" 

Edward Caird. 

"Evolution is continuous, progressive change, according to certain laws, and 

by means of resident forces P 

Le Conte. 

" There is a great distinction to be drawn between the fact of evolution and 

the manner of it, or between the evidence of evolution, as having taken place 

somehow, and the evidence of the causes which have been concerned in the 

process? 

Romanes. 



CHAPTER XL 

EVOLUTION AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

I. Obviously the search for that in man which is 
the source of progress is beset with an ever-increasing 
number of facts, going to show that, at the outset, man 
had no moral, intellectual, religious, or social life at all, 
in the proper sense of these words. At the outset 
there was no society. Man could not be studied in his 
relations ; for at that early day, when he had just issued 
from pure animalism, he had no idea of law, no definite 
relations. Professor Caird sees this difficulty, and says : 
" The phenomena of savage life are equally irrelevant 
to the religious and to the moral history of mankind. 
If morality takes its rise in the conflict between the 
ideal of duty and the life of animal instinct, then we 
can scarcely say that man, when he is almost wholly 
imprisoned in the circle of natural events and impulses, 
has yet entered on his career as a moral being. And, 
for the same reason, the Fetichist can scarcely be said 
to have entered into the sphere of religion." x Religion 
and morals are there, but they are " latent." They are 
present in much the same way as science and art are 
present in the new-born babe. And the question arises, 
are they in the child at the beginning, are they in his 
environment, or are they the outcome of the reaction 

1 J. Caird's Philosophy of Religion, p. 329. 
233 



234 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

of the one upon the other ? A savage counting his 
fingers is a prophecy of the higher calculus and of 
quaternions. A savage bowing to sticks and stones is 
a prophecy of the Christian consciousness. But who 
fulfils this prophecy? These "latent" powers are val- 
uable just to the extent that they are evolved. But is 
this evolution anything more than a manifestation of 
what already is ? I have kept in this discussion Profes- 
sor Caird's word "latent." Modern physicists have, 
however, set the word aside as misleading. They say 
it is but another word for potential. 

As the word latent has been set aside in physics as 
misleading, so it should be in speaking of the powers 
of man. Says Prof. T. H. Green, "In the growth of 
our experience, in the process of our learning to know 
the world, an animal organism, which has its history in 
time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally com- 
plete consciousness. What we call our mental history 
is not a history of this consciousness, which, in itself, 
can have no history, but a history of the process by 
which the animal organism becomes its vehicle. ,, * 

2. It is a failure to grasp this conception that must 
account for a vast amount of confusion in the popular 
religious mind on the questions of the evolution of man 
and of his institutions. It is forgotten that the word 
" origin " has a twofold meaning. It may refer to the 
origin of a phenomenon in time, or to the original and 
eternal idea which is more or less imperfectly em- 
bodied in the phenomenon. To illustrate, the begin- 
ning of a house is not to be sought in the first blow of 
the pick or hammer, but in the ideally formed plan and 

1 Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 72. 



EVOLUTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 235 

purpose to build a house. The true origin of an elm- 
tree is not in the first swelling and sprouting of the 
life in the seed. There is the most essential element 
back of this, in the peculiar organization of the proto- 
plasm which determines it as an elm, and not an ash or 
oak. In other words, then, the essential origin of a 
thing is not to be found in its earliest and most incom- 
plete, but in its latest and most complete manifes- 
tation. The origin of science, ethics, religion, and 
civilization is to be found not in the remote past, but 
in the present. The best sample of the eternal con- 
sciousness is not the least evolved, but the most 
evolved consciousness. Man is not only the end, but 
the beginning of nature. Nature becomes conscious 
of herself in man, and man in his turn may read her 
secrets. And in spelling out these secrets, he is but 
traversing with nature the path that led to himself. 
The study of the evolution of religion must, then, be- 
gin and end with the ideally perfect man. If we leave 
this ideal out at the beginning of our study, and start 
with that which is only animal and brutish, we must 
posit the existence somewhere of a "latent," or hidden, 
or as yet unevolved, force which is to gradually appear 
to us. 1 In other words, we would be letting in by 
stealth, little by little, and at a side door, what we re- 
fused admittance over the threshold. With all our 
pains, therefore, we may not find the true origin of our 
religion, and be able to state it with completeness. For 
even if we seek it in the present, it remains that we do 
not fully understand our own tendencies, our own 
moods, and all the grounds of our conscious life. . We 

1 E. Caird's Social Phil, and Rel. of Comte. 



236 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

feel that there is a force working in us whose ends are 
only partly known to us. It is therefore often said of 
our greatest prophets and teachers, past and present, 
that they builded better than they knew. But if this is 
so, then these men do not fully understand themselves. 
And as Professor Erdmann has profoundly remarked, 
a philosophy that does not understand itself cannot be 
a complete philosophy. So, also, a man who does not 
understand himself cannot be a complete man. The 
grandeur of the future is not yet half revealed to us. 
And until that day comes we must not be too sure 
about origins, for the true origins of man and society 
are to be sought at the end of history, not at the begin- 
ning, nor at the ages midway between. 1 

3. While thus, according to such writers as the 
Cairds and Green, the essential causes of progress are 
hid in the immutable counsels of God, they are not at 
all adverse to the work of those writers who search 
deeply into the history of our civilization for the 
occasioning causes of our advancement. They are, 
indeed, especially friendly to this kind of investiga- 
tion when it is pursued in the proper spirit. So, then, 
while we may admit that progress is no more than the 
manifestation of a consciousness which is eternally the 
same, and is itself the efficient cause of that progress, 
we are in duty bound to discover, so far as we may, 
what are the conditions most favorable to the growth 
of that consciousness. And we may also hope for 
some light in the solution of the question by studying 
religion from the point of view of the evolution of re- 
ligion. By no means is it necessary that such a study 

1 See J. Cairo? s Philosophy of Religion, p. 346. 



EVOLUTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 2$? 

be negative or rationalistic. In theistic evolution the 
resident force in the world is none other than the 
immanent God. Evolution stands for a great and 
mighty truth, so also does theism, and they are not 
antagonistic to each other. 

The study of religion from the point of view of the 
evolutionist is of comparatively recent date. Yet this 
method of investigation and apologetics strikes its 
roots deep into the past. 

4. In 1780 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing published a 
wonderful work, though scarce more than a pamphlet 
in size, entitled " The Education of the Human Race." 
Its opening sentence strikes a new note in the history 
of religion, and sheds a new and before unknown har- 
mony over the sacred Scriptures. " That which educa- 
tion is to the individual/' affirms Lessing, "revelation 
is to the race. Education is revelation coming to the 
individual man ; and revelation is education which has 
come, and is yet coming, to the human race." This 
is the author's point of view throughout. Revelation 
gives us nothing which is beyond reason, nothing which 
is beyond the ordinary faculties of mind and soul to 
attain ; but, thanks to the assistance of men whose fac- 
ulties have been quickened by the divine Spirit, these 
truths come to us earlier through revelation than they 
otherwise could have done. If revelation is education, 
then all lessons obviously may not be taught to the 
race at once. There must be a rational plan and order 
in the procedure. Not all the attributes of God will be 
apprehended at once and with equal clearness on the 
part of the people. The divine plan, then, adapts the 
lessons to the pupils. So also the higher ethical mo- 



238 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

tives are for a long season kept in the background. 
The Bible is, as its name implies, a library, and the 
oldest books are primers. They are such as would 
be adapted to children to-day; they were even better 
adapted to the child-race. Education is carried on "by 
rewards and punishments addressed to the senses. ,, 
Had God revealed himself to man at the outset in all 
his fulness, there would have been the " same fault in 
the divine rule as is committed by the schoolmaster, who 
chooses to hurry his pupil too rapidly." Because, how- 
ever, the Bible shows God to have been a wise school- 
master, it also shows that his chosen people, while they 
have been overtaken and surpassed here and there by 
" more happily organized " children of nature, are yet, 
in the grand total, far in advance of all others in the 
knowledge and practice of truth. 

To Lessing, as to Kant, the absence of a doctrine of 
immortality in the Old Testament occasions serious dif- 
ficulties. While the earlier portions of the Bible are a 
primer and are adapted to a child-race, they " must con- 
tain absolutely nothing which blocks up the way towards 
the knowledge which is held back." While the primer 
must be suited to its readers, it must contain nothing 
which is absolute error. Lessing thinks that for the 
early race there was a real gain in omitting all positive 
teaching regarding individual immortality. 1 For, while 
this was held in abeyance, the ethical life was being 
firmly planted upon a surer basis than would have been 

1 To be sure the oldest parts of the Old Testament reveal a belief in 
the immortality of the national life. And the Jews had the examples of 
Enoch and Elijah who had not died. Yet, for all this, the question in Job 
xiv. 14 was not answered. 



EVOLUTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 239 

possible had the popular thought been dominated by a 
belief in a future world of rewards and punishments. 

At last the child-race becomes a youth. " Sweetmeats 
and toys give place to the budding desire to be free." 
Slowly there comes the consciousness of intellectual 
and moral freedom. This is, to Lessing, the period 
when the Hebrews came to pure monotheism, to a 
belief in Jehovah as the absolute God of the universe. 
" Revelation had guided their reason, and now, all at 
once, reason gave clearness to their revelation. . . . 
And the cultivation of revealed truths into truths of 
reason is absolutely necessary, if the human race is to 
be assisted by them." 

The education of the human race reaches its highest 
mark in the life and teachings of Christ. Yet Lessing 
refuses to consider "contemptible" the views of those 
who predict that "the New Covenant must become as 
antiquated as the Old." He merely refuses to limit 
the teaching and revealing powers of the infinite God. 
And he warns, on the other hand, against rashness in 
affirming the old primers effete. There are many back- 
ward pupils, and some are very backward. For the 
sake of these let no evil word be said against the primer. 
What is taken "for a blunder in the teaching," by the 
rashly wise, may be the highest mark of teaching skill, 
when all the details are known. Nor is it safe to deny 
to a precept its title to divineness because it is found 
among all early civilizations. "God makes immediate 
revelations of mere truths of reason, or has permitted 
and caused pure truths of reason to be taught for some 
time as truths of immediate revelation, in order to 
promulgate them the more rapidly, and ground them 
the more firmly." 



24O BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Here we have the first beginnings of the application 
of the principle of development to the sacred Scrip- 
tures. And they who to-day are seeking to discover 
all the laws and manners of the evolution of pure reli- 
gion among men are following in the lines pointed out 
by Lessing. 

5. Since Lessing's time a wonderful advance has 
been made, and now no scholar thinks of studying the 
great religions except in the light of their origins and 
subsequent developments. 

No careful student of the origin and development 
of religions can any longer deny the main postulates of 
the philosophy of evolution. This is evident from the 
fact that no religion enters, or has entered, the world 
perfect, either morally or ideally. 1 This being admitted, 
it is certainly worth our while to inquire what are the 
laws of growth, and, that we may use them for analogy 
and suggestion, what are the laws of evolution in plant 
and animal life? It is not any longer a mark of wis- 
dom to deny to the student of Christianity the right 
and duty to investigate the claims of his religion in the 
light of these lately-discovered laws. We may even go 
farther, and maintain that the facts of religion ought 
to be classified in accordance with these laws, just as 
other phenomena are classified. We may, I think, 
accept the argument as given by Professor Le Conte in 
his " Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought," 
and attempt, on the basis of this, to add new light to 

1 Possibly Christianity is an exception, yet the facts, seemingly, are the 
other way. Jesus " grew in knowledge;" Paul's theology developed. 
And the Church was not perfect till it had gathered of every sort, and so 
proved the absoluteness of its message. 



EVOLUTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 241 

the theological doctrines of revelation, redemption, and 
regeneration. It will soon appear that all in the old 
doctrines that really corresponded in a healthful way 
with human experience is still there, and that many 
new correspondences have been discovered. It appears 
that Christianity has found a real and life-giving en- 
vironment in humanity. 

6. But, apparently, we are not yet ready to apply in 
detail the methods of evolution to religion. We are 
quibbling over evolution as a philosophy ; we are mis- 
representing and misunderstanding each other, when 
we ought to be using evolution as a method, as a work- 
ing hypothesis, for the uplifting of the race. We all 
want evolution in religion. We want a more universal 
theology, may I say a more humane theology? We 
want a purer standard of ethics, and a larger number of 
our fellows living moral and spiritual lives. Now, what 
are the laws of this evolution ? What are they in the 
natural world ? What are they in the social world of 
man? These questions answered, and we are in a posi- 
tion to reinvigorate our religion on both the practical 
and the theoretical side. We are able to enter intelli- 
gently into the work of human redemption, and co- 
operate with God, where often heretofore he has been 
compelled to work alone, because, with our little philos- 
ophy, and our little theology, we quite often "get in 
the way " in our efforts to help. 

Another idea which has vitiated the studies of many 
scholars is this, that the religious instinct is the source 
of all progress. This is not strictly true ; the evolution 
of religion has, as a matter of fact, gone hand in hand 
with man's social and moral advance. The religion of 



242 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Israel, at the outset, was not moral at all, in our sense 
of the word. But the earliest religions and the earli- 
est morality go hand in hand. "Instead of leading 
the way in social and ethical progress, religion was 
often content to follow, or even to lag behind." 1 
Again, of a primitive community Professor Smith says, 
" Its friends are the god's friends, its enemies the god's 
enemies ! It takes its god with it in whatsoever it 
chooses to do." So far the historian and the exegete ! 
but the philosopher does not object. Dr. Pfleiderer says, 
whether the course of a particular religion " is to lead 
upward or downward depends from the first on the atti- 
tude taken up toward the moral potencies of life." In 
another place he makes religious development recipro- 
cally dependent upon " the development of civilization" 
The italics are Pfleiderer's. If we grant that Chris- 
tianity has been a moral force, we have yet to search 
for the source of Christianity's power to adapt itself to 
our advancing life. Advance steps have almost invari- 
ably been taken (have they not ?) by scientists, philoso- 
phers, and philanthropists, who, technically speaking, 
were not Christians. I doubt if ethics is so entirely 
dependent upon religion as some scholars have main- 
tained. Both have original roots in human nature, and 
each will reciprocally aid the other, and neither will 
appear at its best without the normal activity of the 
other. 

7. In recent years two Christian scholars have, in a 
thorough-going way, applied the method of evolution 
to religious science. One of these is an Old Testa- 
ment specialist, and the other is a professor of philoso- 
1 W. R. Smith's Religion of the Semites, p. 53. 



EVOLUTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 243 

phy. Both these men are justly eminent. Robertson 
Smith sees and proclaims that the facts at hand in Old 
Testament science furnish a " variety of evidence to 
show that the type of religion which is founded on kin- 
ship, and in which the deity and his worshippers make 
up a society united by the bond of blood, was widely 
prevalent; and that at an early date, among all the 
Semitic peoples. But the force of the evidence goes 
further, and leaves no reasonable doubt that among the 
Semites this was the original type of religion, out of 
which all other types grew." * 

Prof. Edward Caird says, " Tjjiis whole historic pro- 
cess [the development of Hebrew religion] furnishes 
perhaps the most striking of all illustrations of reli- 
gious evolution. In other words, it exhibits to us a 
typical instance of the development of a religious idea 
from lower to higher forms, till, finally, it exhausts 
itself and dies, only, however, to rise again in a reli- 
gion of a much higher type." 2 

Professor Smith's statement is by no means a spo- 
radic one ; there are four hundred pages of proof. From 
scores of sources, the Bible among them, evidence is 
brought forth showing that the early Semites believed 
that they were related to their gods by blood, and were 
their lineal descendants. The tribes were held together 
by a common religion ; viz., the worship of a reputed 
ancestor, or totem animal. The Calebites were a tribe 
who attributed their origin to a dog. A similar belief, 
no doubt, gave rise to the expression "Lion tribe of 
Judah." Passages in the Old Testament which suggest 

1 Religion of the Semites, p. 51. 

2 Evolution of Religion, vol. i. p. 398. 



244 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

these ideas to the critical student are found in I Sam. 
xx. 29, and Judges xviii. 19. 1 So, then, we are not able 
to follow a recent author when he says, "As a matter of 
fact, in the most ancient and most influential religions 
of the world, we do not find any outline of any such 
evolution as Mr. Spencer suggests." I do not pretend 
to say that Cheyne, Stade, and W. R. Smith accept 
Spencer's theory of religion as a complete explanation 
of all the phenomena ; but these scholars are in too 
close agreement with Spencer, and with the more re- 
cent evolutionists in particular, to warrant the assertion 
that Spencer and Darwin are on the wrong side of this 
question altogether. 

In fact, special students are also working among the 
documents bearing upon the origins of other religions, 
and various fields of research are yielding material 
that confirms the main outlines of the evolution theory 
of the origin of religion. The opinion of Mueller, to 
which many assent, that the more we go back toward 
the sources of the various religions the purer we find 
their conceptions of the Deity, does not commend 
itself to the scientific scholarship of our day. It may, 
perhaps, be said that the oldest literary statement of 
religious belief that we have is a pure monotheism. 
But Professor Sayce has argued, and not in vain, to 
show that this literary statement marks not the begin- 
ning, but the close of a long historic development. 2 

8. Prof. E. Caird's volumes on the " Evolution of Re- 

1 Cf. also Stade's Geschichte des Volkes Israel, iii. 403, and Cheyne's 
Isa. ii. 121, 122, 291. 

2 For further discussion of Smith's Religion of the Semites, see the 
chapter on the Way of Salvation. 



EVOLUTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 245 

ligion " are exceedingly fresh and stimulating. There 
is all the inspiration and insight of a prophet, and all 
the candor and frankness of a scholar in these pages. 
Professor Caird believes in the reign of law, but by 
this he certainly does not mean the exclusive reign of 
those laws which we have come to speak of as physical. 
" To say that there is a universal reign of law, and that 
nothing happens without a cause, is by no means to say 
that there is one kind of law and one kind of cause 
for everything." And especially is it true, in human 
affairs, that the motives to action have changed as the 
mind and heart have developed in sensitiveness and in 
strength. 1 Between us and the past, in this respect, is' 
a great chasm ; and, as Professor Caird thinks, only by 
the aid of evolution can we bridge over the chasm 
between us and that past. 2 Certainly we cannot defend 
that past, as a whole, except for its own niche in 
history. But when we have so defended it, we have 
put ourselves into the best possible position to recog- 
nize what its real merits, its permanent elements 
are. 

A difficulty in the way of a comprehensive study of 
religion appears at the outset in the definition that is 
given to religion. By some definitions all but Christi- 
anity are false religions, or not religions at all. If we 
include the intellectual and moral elements to any great 
degree, many of the lower types are excluded. Then 
we are forced to say that religion arose de novo by spe- 

1 Not until the time of Daniel's book, 160, did the Jews believe that 
the head was the seat of thought. In all the earlier books the " heart' ' 
is the organ of reflection. 

2 Evolution of Religion, vol. i. p. 25. 



246 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

cial revelation, that it began with the great man. 
There is certainly something to be said for this view. 
But, as a matter of fact, some of the historic religions 
were nature religions, and, so far as we know, do not 
owe their origin to a great religious teacher. Further, 
even in the case of the revealed religions, it is obvious 
that their prophets must be, to a very large extent, 
explained by their environments. Their messages are 
influenced by that against which they react, and by the 
needs of the people to whom they appeal. For this 
reason Caird objects to any arbitrary definition of reli- 
gion. Any definition which cuts across the line of human 
development, shutting out all which do not come up to 
a certain standard, is to make a helpful study of the 
evolution of religion impossible. 1 So, too, to take the 
common element in all religions as a basis is perni- 
cious ; " what we want is, rather, the germinative prin- 
ciple." That principle is a thirst for a more complete, 
harmonious, and perfect life. Says Professor Caird, 
" A man's religion is the expression of his ultimate 
attitude to the universe, the summed-up meaning and 
purport of his whole consciousness of things. How, 
and how far, he arises above the parts to the whole ; 
how, and how far, he gathers his scattered conscious- 
ness of the world and of himself to a unity ; how, and 
how far, he makes anything like a final return upon 
himself from all his fortunes and experiences, is shown 
more clearly in his religion than in any other expression 
of his inner life. ,> 2 This definition tells the whole story. 
Man's religion advances pari passu with himself. And 
the germinating principle is the desire for a perfect life; 
1 Op. Cit., p. 46. 2 Op. Cit., p. 30. 



EVOLUTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 2Afi 

it is the resident force, it is the indwelling God coming 
to ever more complete expression. And " if religion 
ever becomes extinct, it can only be because it has 
served its purpose, and has given rise to some more 
comprehensive form of life." 

Prof. A. B. Bruce accepts in a general way the con- 
clusions reached by such scholars as Caird and Smith, 
and bases his defence of the earlier and lower forms of 
Old Testament religion and morality entirely upon the 
fact that God could not fully reveal himself to primi- 
tive man and primitive society. The application of the 
evolution philosophy to religion and especially to the 
Biblical religion has, in fact, completely revolutionized 
apologetics ; and the new apologetics must succeed 
ultimately in restoring the Old Testament to favor 
among many intelligent and earnest religious people 
who, by the old views, were forced to regard many of 
its chapters as only immoral and degrading. 



CHAPTER XII. 



LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 
WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 



Question. " What is to save me from falling into the power of some foolish, 
or ignorant, or partisan writer, and being put off with views which lack the 
approval of the wise ? 

Answer. " One safeguard lies in discovering who are the leading writers 

on your topic. As you run your eye along the margin of one book after another 

on the subject, you will be pretty sure to see certain names repeated again and 

again. Writers of various grades and opinions will agree hi their recurring 

references to these names. The references possibly may nearly all be for the 

purpose of stricture and refutation. Never mind. A book which many writers 

think worth controverting is pretty sure to be worth reading. . . . Drop other 

books and go for these. . . . These are the writers to cultivate, if you would 

save time in the end, and have opinions which shall be something more than the 

echo of echoes P 

J. H. Thayer. 



CHAPTER XII. 

LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT WITH 
SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 

I. PROFESSOR RYLE AND THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON. 

I. There has just come to hand a treatise on "The 
Canon of the Old Testament/' by Herbert E. Ryle of 
Cambridge, England, which deserves attention. 

Driver has dated for us, as best he could, the books 
and parts of books of the Old Testament. He has given 
us an analysis of each chapter, told its purpose, and, 
when known, its author. Other books that are else- 
where reviewed in these pages have traced for us the 
civil and religious history of the Hebrew people, and 
expounded the content of Old Testament theology. 
The book at present under discussion aims to tell when 
the particular books of the Old Testament began to be 
regarded as divinely inspired and authoritative. It has, 
no doubt, often occurred to the inquiring mind as some- 
what strange that Hebrew literature should come down 
to us as Bible, as Holy Scripture, while Greek, Latin, 
and other literatures can at best claim to be nothing 
other than classical. The usual explanations of this 
strange fact do not explain. They assume the exist- 
ence of an inspired Hebrew Bible, and then, with great 
learning, proceed to show that our Old Testament is 
such Hebrew Bible. Ryle's method is very different. 

251 



252 LEISURELY RAMBLES JN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

He proceeds on the basis of history, and he believes 
that Driver's " Introduction " and the Britannica arti- 
cle, "Israel," are a fair statement of the conclusions 
warranted by the facts at our command. Ryle is no 
rationalist. I have every reason to believe that he is 
more orthodox than many who will read what I here 
write of him. But he is not a man whose orthodoxy 
blinds him to the facts that are every day coming to 
light to assist in a fairer, more humane, more rational 
understanding of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. 
Ryle believes in God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, in 
all the affirmations of the Church ; but still he believes 
that to fight the tendencies of an age is to make an 
age work at cross-purpose, it is merely to delay the 
inevitable. As has been well said by a recent writer 
on the plays of Sophocles, regarding those who try to 
stem the tide, " They are the contemporaries of their 
ancestors or of posterity." Here are Ryle's own 
words : " The Church is demanding a courageous re- 
statement of those facts upon which modern historical 
criticism has thrown new light. If, in the attempt to 
meet this demand, the Christian scholarship of the 
present generation should err through rashness, love 
of change, or inaccuracy of observation, the Christian 
scholarship of another generation will repair the error. 
Progress towards the truth must be made. But it will 
not be made without many a stumble." This is certainly 
a statement showing great fairness and breadth, and to 
the old dogmatists it would be a sign that those who 
thus confess feel the weakness of their positions. But 
to a scholar it is a sign of their greatness. It is a sign 
that the advocates of the critical and historical methods 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 2 53 

of Bible interpretation are neither narrow, bigoted, nor 
destructive. 

2. As is well known, the Hebrew Bible is divided 
into three parts, Law, Prophets, and Writings ; and 
Ryle argues, against the older scholars, that this three- 
fold division marks three clearly defined stages in the 
process that finally gave us the sacred Scriptures. The 
Law includes the so-called five books of Moses. The 
Prophets include what we know as histories and proph- 
ets. The histories are called "former prophets ; " they 
are Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. The " latter 
prophets" are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve 
Minor Prophets. The Writings constitute the remain- 
der of the Old Testament. It is a noteworthy fact 
that the Psalms and Job belong here. But still more 
striking, perhaps, is the fact that Esther, Ezra-Nehe- 
miah, and Chronicles do not appear with the other his- 
tories, and that Daniel is in this list and not one of the 
prophets. What do these facts mean ? According to 
Ryle they mean this, that the Law was canonized in 
the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, 444 b.c. ; the Prophets 
a short time prior to the persecutions of Antiochus 
Epiphanes, say 200 B.C. ; and the Writings not until 
shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, 71 a.d. 

At the first blush these seem to be startling revela- 
tions. But a careful consideration of the evidence, 
both external and internal, confirms the substantial ac- 
curacy of these conclusions. It must, of course, be 
borne in mind that the date of the composition of a 
book is quite a different thing from its acceptance into 
a sacred collection. Many of the Old Testament books 
were "the ordinary literature of a believing people" for 



254 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

a considerable period previous to their being generally- 
accepted as having divine sanction. Indeed, it is doubt- 
ful whether "Sacred" or "Holy" meant more to the 
early Jews than we mean by "Classical." At any rate, 
a "theory of inspiration" is a comparatively late 
growth. 

3. It is, of course, a mistake to suppose that the can- 
onization of Scripture was a sudden affair. Even the 
Law was not ratified suddenly in the days of Ezra and 
Nehemiah. Ezra had gradually led the people up to 
the final act, and even then the law they accepted was 
largely composed of codes that had long been considered 
authoritative. So, too, the songs and histories and 
prophecies incorporated into the Pentateuch were many 
of them very old. Some of these were undoubtedly 
folk-songs and folk-tales that had come down from the 
earliest times. Books that were popular in the eighth 
century B.C. have been lost. Yet we seem to have 
the substance of them preserved for us. Num. xxi. 14 
quotes the Book of the Wars of Jahveh, and Josh. x. 13 
quotes the Book of Jashar. Now we know that the 
Book of Jashar contained an account of events as late 
as the days of Solomon. The text of 1 Kings viii. 53 x is 
not clear, but the reader may consult 2 Sam. i. 18 for 
substantial confirmation of the above. These old song- 
books could be repeated verbatim by the people. They 
were religious and patriotic; to be sure, they had no 
divine authority, yet they were reverenced and loved. 
No one ever thought of doubting their truthfulness. 
Some of the songs, too, came down from the times of 
Moses and the Judges, and idealized a forgotten age. 

1 The LXX. quotes "Jashar," though Tt? was read instead of *V&\ 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 255 

There were also codes of laws that were very old. 
Perhaps the oldest was that of the ten words, though it 
must have read very differently from our Ten Com- 
mandments. It has been supposed that originally all 
the prohibitions assumed the form "do not kill/' "do 
not steal," etc. At any rate, the Ten Commandments 
as we have them in Exodus xx. are of more recent date 
than the laws immediately following (Ex. xxi.-xxiii.). 
A careful reading of these laws at once discloses the 
fact that they belong to a people that possessed very 
meagre literary abilities, and were but just emerging 
from a pastoral to an agricultural mode of life. 

4. The next code of laws of importance was that of 
Deut. v.-xxvi. Here we have repeated most of the laws 
of Ex. xxi.-xxiii., with additions. There is here a law 
for the king, and the agricultural life is now firmly es- 
tablished. The moral tone of the laws is much more 
lofty, and they are set forth in less crude form. As 
we know, this code was ratified in the days of Josiah as 
the law of the land. It was not accepted as Holy Scrip- 
ture, but as a state constitution ; it was adopted as the 
law of the land. This, I believe, is the first approach 
towards canonization that we have any account of in 
the Old Testament. Whether the earlier book of the 
covenant, Ex. xxi.-xxiii., was ever accepted in any such 
formal way is, I think, doubtful. A still later code of 
laws, and one that is manifestly an improvement upon 
any former redaction, is the so-called Law of Holi- 
ness found in Lev. xvii.-xxvi. The opinion is rapidly 
gaining ground that this code was drawn up in the days 
of Ezekiel. But it seems to have made no very great 
impression until it was published as part of the com- 



256 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

pleted Torah in the time of Ezra. The absence of any 
mention of the law of Moses, or of an accepted body of 
law (Torah), previous to the days of Ezra, leads Ryle to 
the conclusion that the Pentateuch was first made Holy 
Scripture in the days of Ezra. 

5. The Prophets, the second third of the Hebrew 
Bible, and defined at the beginning of this chapter, 
were all or nearly all in existence at this time, but they 
were not regarded as having divine authority. There is 
a tradition that Nehemiah completed the canon; this 
Ryle overthrows in a very conclusive excursus at the 
close of his volume. It is, however, probable that Nehe- 
miah was influential in lifting certain books, that later 
were canonized as Prophets, to the rank of authoritative 
interpretations of tjie Law. A history like Judges or 
Kings illustrates and confirms the laws of Deuteron- 
omy. And the prophets proper were surely recognized 
as able expounders of the law of Jahveh. In their own 
days the prophets were often regarded as enthusiasts. 
They were too far in advance of the masses to meet 
with much favor. But as the years rolled by, and the 
people advanced in morals and intellectual perception, 
they began to see that the law was, after all, a compro- 
mise. It was civil rather than ideal. It aimed at what 
might be rather than what ought to be. So it gradually 
came to be believed that while the priest was the tem- 
poral (civil) interpreter of the law, the prophet was its 
eternal and inspired vindicator. Not suddenly did this 
idea come to prevail. No doubt it was opposed and 
hindered in many circles. But the Book of Ecclesiasti- 
cus, chapters xlix.-l. (180 B.C.), speaks of the prophets 
in such a way as to lead to the conclusion that in the 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 2$y 

year 200 B.C. the Hebrew Holy Scriptures consisted of 
the Law and the Prophets. 

6. The name given by the Hebrews themselves to 
the last division of their Bible is very significant. It is 
the simple title, Writings. Now, evidently at the time 
this title was given, the books that went under this 
name were not regarded as especially holy. We get the 
picture exactly from the title of the Hebrew Bible that 
has come down to us. In the year 200 B.C. the Hebrew 
literature consists of a law, divinely inspired and pur- 
porting to come from Moses, of prophets, likewise in- 
spired, consisting of four histories and fifteen prophets, 
and writings. Of these writings nothing is said. Their 
divine authority is neither affirmed nor denied. Tacitly, 
indeed, their inspiration is denied. They are just writ- 
ings. At the time the New Testament was written 
they had nearly all been accepted as canonical, but they 
kept the old name. As a consequence the New Tes- 
tament speaks of the sacred writings of the Jews as 
Scriptures. The terms Law and Prophets were also 
often used in later times to designate the whole Old 
Testament. 

We know that some Psalms are Maccabean ; we know 
that Daniel must come from the days of Antiochus. 
Esther and Ecclesiastes are undoubtedly very late. 
With all this agrees their place in the canon. The fact 
that Daniel does not occur among the prophets is suffi- 
ciently explained, if Daniel was not written at the time 
the prophets were canonized. Chronicles ought to 
appear with Samuel and Kings, but Chronicles was 
scarcely written at the time the list of Prophets was 
closed. The fact that the third canon is composed of 



258 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

a different class of writings from the others will no 
longer suffice. It is far from true to the facts, and 
a better explanation of the threefold division has been 
found. I have only space to suggest that Ryle's rea- 
sons for saying that the third canon was not fully rec- 
ognized until after the destruction of Jerusalem, seem 
to me to be conclusive. In New Testament times, and 
to New Testament writers, there was certainly much 
diversity of opinion. 

II. THE LIBERAL PREACHER AND THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 

I. There is a tendency on the part of some to 
personify the higher criticism, and make it synony- 
mous with negativism and atheism. Such methods 
are not complimentary to those who use them. Im- 
mature personification has led to untold evil in all 
branches of learning. The heathen personified their 
gods and let this pass for a definition of them. The 
scholastics personified human faculties, virtues, and 
vices, and carried their evil methods to such extremes 
that Lord Bacon could speak literally of them as idols ; 
" idols of the market-place, and the theatre. ,, Idols of 
the sort here referred to are the results of shiftless 
mental processes, or they are the creations of the 
child-intellect. The dog, it is said, interprets all move- 
ment zoomorphically. The savage, from imperfect 
knowledge, personifies all natural forces. He knows 
no movement apart from his own finite life. And so 
he explains all motion anthropomorphically. This leads 
the primitive man into countless errors. It wholly 
unfits him to be a witness to the truth. I can explain 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 2 59 

in no other way certain ideas of my contemporaries. 
Because they have not taken the trouble to inform 
themselves, they can do nothing but call names. To 
them the higher criticism is either a "thing," or it is a 
"person." Sometimes it is a thing, a tool, used by the. 
intentionally vicious to destroy truth and virtue. To 
employ a figure of the Autocrat, " sin has many tools 
for smashing up the Bible, but the higher criticism is 
the handle which fits them all." More often, however, 
in extreme Orthodox papers that have recently come to 
my notice, the higher criticism has assumed the role 
of a person, a morally responsible being. The higher 
criticism is spoken of as doing certain things, as lead- 
ing the Church astray, as attacking now this, now that, 
"impregnable" rock of Scripture, which Scripture, to 
judge by the wailing, does not wholly establish its im- 
pregnability. But the higher criticism, to these primi- 
tive types of the Bible student, is morally responsible. 
It is to be reserved for punishment. It is doomed. 
Smoke and ashes will alone remain at the last. 

This personification, to which I have referred, is not 
mere rhetoric; it is not rhetoric at all. Capricious 
coincidence alone gives it that appearance. This being 
so, it is a mistake to interpret these statements as 
rhetoric. They are of a piece with other idolatries. 
Aside from the moral and religious content, the mental 
processes by which they are reached are the same. 

2. The higher criticism of the Bible is merely the 
employment of scientific methods in Biblical study. 
Those methods of research which have given us the 
locomotive, the telegraph, and the electric car, are 
being used also in the study of the Bible. If we 



260 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

knew how many useless things Tom Edison does and 
thinks, every day of his life, we would be amazed. 
Not one in a thousand of his schemes — I'm m'ostly 
guessing — ever comes to anything. Some of them are 
laughable in the extreme to himself as he recalls them. 
In science these myriads of guesses and blunders and 
errors never come to light, or, at least, only occasion- 
ally. The fittest survive, the others are forgotten. 
Where, however, trial is necessary, there are cases of 
misplaced genius, and that without number. Where 
one useful thing is patented many useless ones are. 
Is it worth while to personify Invention, and say all 
manner of evil of it, because more useless tools are 
patented than good ones ? Not by any means ; because, 
in the aggregate, we see unmistakable signs of prog- 
ress. To one who is half-informed the cases are almost 
completely parallel. One cannot follow the history of 
Biblical study for the last one hundred years without 
being thoroughly convinced of this. A Biblical theory 
gets out of date now as quick as a bicycle or an electric 
car. Is this a sign of progress in the one, and of illu- 
sion in the other ? By no means. Despite aberrations 
here and there, it has been steady advance from the 
first application of rational methods to the study of the 
Scriptures. 

In one especial particular it may occur to the reader 
that progress in mechanical inventions and jn Biblical 
science are not parallel to the degree above specified. 
It may be said that the one deals with facts, and the 
other with theories and hypotheses. This is not so to 
the degree that many suppose. Much of our modern 
progress in science rests upon assumptions that are 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 26 1 

wholly unproved. Further, to the student of history, 
of language and philosophy, it at once appears that the 
higher criticism is based upon facts. Professor Green of 
Princeton and Professor Bissell of Hartford are as much 
higher critics as are their opponents. They differ in 
that they draw different conclusions from the facts. As 
has often enough been said, it is ignorance of obvious 
facts that must alone account for the prevailing tradi- 
tional views of the Bible. I say this in spite of the 
two scholars I have named. Why ? Because a rapidly 
increasing number of men who possess the facts these 
men possess have forsaken their dogmatic positions, 
and unprejudiced men have invariably done so. 

4. Rev. R. Heber Newton, the Broad Church Epis- 
copalian, says, that in the Bible "is contained God's 
true word." But he also argues that it is wrong "to 
accept its utterances indiscriminately," "to consult it 
as a heathen oracle," "to treat it as authority save in 
matters of religion;" it is wrong to disregard its chro- 
nology in constructing its theology. On the positive 
side the author grows eloquent. The Bible is our 
moral and spiritual guide and instructor. Its pages 
teem with inspirations and helps. Those who read it 
sympathetically, who find its "mystic sense," will be 
more than rewarded. It never fails to create a sense 
of sin and a passion for the ideal. "Read it daily," 
says Dr. Newton; "read it in the choicest moments of 
the day." 

In the same vein is that apt word of Rev. Newman 
Smyth's, "the faults of the Old Testament are, as Her- 
der said, the faults of the pupil, and not of the teacher. 
They are the necessary incidents of a course of moral 



262 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

education. . . . The same law of evolution seems to 
have been followed alike in nature and in the Bible." 

5. These men are both Christian preachers, and 
neither is a rationalist in any narrow sense of that 
word. 

There is a very prevalent opinion that criticism and 
rationalism somehow mean about the same thing, 
and Bible study has been somewhat impeded by this 
supposed identity. The critics do certainly eliminate 
some of the Bible miracles. There are those who elim- 
inate them all. But Professor Driver is a supernatu- 
ralist. So are Canon Cheyne, Professor Ryle, and Dr. 
Horton. All these men believe in the Christian re- 
ligion. They all see visible traces of the hand of God 
in the Old Testament. They believe in the eternal 
usefulness of that revelation. 

The critics do seek for natural causes, and they find 
them often where the older scholars did not. But the 
Christian student knows that when he has explained all 
that can be explained, he has but begun to probe the 
mysteries of God. Where does the real miracle lie, is 
the question. Granting that the prophet Isaiah saved 
Judah from Israel's fate in the year 711 or 701, where 
and how did God help him ? Was Isaiah told some- 
thing by God which came to him as a new thought, 
apart from any intellectual process on his own part — 
were the very words of his message to his king put 
into his mouth ? Or did the prophet arrive at all this 
by intellectual processes of his own — processes which 
were made possible to him by the sincerity of his 
thought, the purity of his life, and the nearness of his 
soul to God ? I doubt if any one knows fully the ways 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS, 263 

of God with His people. I doubt if the best of the 
prophets could tell us, so we could understand, what 
inspiration and the power to work miracles are like. 
Only those who have had similar uplifts can under- 
stand. All merely scientific or intellectual efforts to 
fathom these things must prove more or less disap- 
pointing. 

As for myself, I have not reached the point where I 
desire or am able consistently to eliminate the miracu- 
lous from the Old Testament or from the New. I do 
not see that criticism leads to any such result. But on 
the other hand, to the critic, the whole Bible is one 
constant miracle. Indeed, I may say that it is the 
grand object of modern scholarship to take the epithet 
miraculous from detached and isolated texts and acts 
here and there, and place it upon the whole as a grand 
and consistent unit. The whole is a miracle. And by 
saying this, I necessarily affirm that there are miracles 
in the parts of which the whole is formed. We may 
disagree as to the value to our Christianity of isolated 
events and narratives, just as we disagree as to the 
elements of strength in a play of Shakespeare's, and 
yet agree upon the essentials. Upon the divinity, the 
grandeur, and the uniqueness of the Christian Revela- 
tion, the critics are agreed. And by far the larger 
number of them are supernaturalists and members of 
evangelical churches. 

There is a tendency on the part of the scholars to 
avoid in their works those phrases of a devotional 
nature which are so common in the sermon and the 
prayer-meeting address ; for this reason the critics are 
often accused of irreverence. The charge is, as a rule, 



264 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

undeserved. The scholar is giving the preacher and 
the Sunday-school teacher his material ; he is not try- 
ing to do his work for him. But this is by no means 
evidence that he has no interest in that work. Indeed, 
most of the critics are also preachers. We could not 
easily do without the inspiring and truly helpful ser- 
mons of Driver, Cheyne, and Schleiermacher. 

That rationalism which denies the possibility of all 
miracles, or even goes so far as to deny the historical 
accuracy of all accounts in our Bible that describe the 
supernatural, finds little or no favor with the majority 
of the higher critics, either in this country or in 
Europe. The whole trend of criticism is away from 
the German rationalism of the last generation. And 
the trend of criticism is just as surely away from the 
crude and materialistic conceptions of the miraculous 
which have dominated the past, and still prevail among 
religious people, who are not materialists in aught but 
the things of the immaterial world. 

III. PROFESSOR TOY AND THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL. 

I. The great mass of literature on Old Testament 
subjects is wholly untrustworthy and unscientific. He- 
brew history has been completely revolutionized during 
the last half century. All the old books, therefore, are 
totally at sea as to their dates, and their theory of the 
genesis of Israelitish institutions. Some of the older 
scholars had all the freedom necessary. De Wette and 
Ewald were not hampered by traditionalism, but in their 
time the key to the Old Testament had not been found. 
Neither Stanley's " Lectures on the Jewish Church/' 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS, 265 

nor EwakTs great work, can be recommended as a his- 
tory of Israel. On the other hand, here and there, as 
character studies, they are unsurpassed. So along the 
line of commentaries, one cannot recommend, for gen- 
eral reading, those of Lange or Keil and Delitzsch. 
Their implied " doctrine of sacred Scripture " has led 
them into too great absurdities of exegesis, and in too 
many particulars, to render them safe as guides. The 
chief error of these authorities is that they always find 
a meaning for a passage, whether the original contains 
it, or otherwise ; and this meaning is obtained often 
enough in utter disregard of Hebrew syntax and lex- 
icography. The best preparation for a helpful wrestle 
with Scripture problems is a free and open mind. And 
I venture the statement here, that freedom in the dis- 
cussion of Biblical questions can tend in only one direc- 
tion. And that " direction " is certainly in more or 
less close accord with what is known as the higher crit- 
icism. 

2. The book which I use constantly, a book which 
no Bible student's study table ought to be without, is 
Prof. C. H. Toy's " History of the Religion of Israel." 
It is divided into thirty lessons, with questions, index, 
and copious references. While professing to be only 
a primer, it is vastly more. The book is so carefully 
written, so happy in its arrangement, and so racy in 
style, as to make it interesting alike to young and old. 
As I have hinted, no one should be without the book. 
No Sunday-school class should be allowed to graduate 
till its members have been taken through it twice or 
thrice. 

3. Another reason why I recommend this book is the 



266 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

fact that it is the only one in English, or at least was 
so until recently, which treats the whole Old Testament 
from the point of view of recent discoveries. No effort 
is made to defend the higher criticism, but its results 
are freely offered to the student. And in some respects 
these are themselves the best defence of those princi- 
ples and methods. In any case, a clear idea of the prob- 
lem is necessary as an introduction to further study ; 
and this problem, while it has many ramifications, is 
really one problem. If there is but one Isaiah, Pen- 
tateuch criticism has been going astray. If the Penta- 
teuch is one and from Moses, many of the reasons, indeed, 
most of those urged against an early date for Isaiah, 
chapters xl.-lxvi., fall to the ground. So, too, the criticism 
of the Psalms means nothing if the ideas of the Priests' 
Code in the Pentateuch and of the Babylonian Isaiah 
are already very old, the one to David and the other to 
Ezra. Evidently, then, a fair notion of the results of 
the higher criticism as a whole ought to precede any 
special study of a particular part. Much superficial, 
and so far immoral, criticism of the Scriptures is due to 
the fact that the critic fails in this particular. 

IV. W. ROBERTSON SMITH AND THE JEWISH BIBLE. 

I. "The Old Testament in the Jewish Church" is a 
delightful series of twelve lectures on Biblical criticism 
by that recognized master of a rational theology and a 
clear style, W. Robertson Smith. While avowedly 
popular, it is so in no ignoble sense, and the book is 
further furnished with fifty pages of critical notes and 
a copious index. 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 267 

The aim of these lectures is to show how the books 
of the Old Testament originated, how they came to be 
regarded as authoritative, and at what dates. 

2. The author begins by declaring that a more care- 
ful and sympathetic study of the Scriptures is in de- 
mand. The traditional views have led the Church into 
gross errors here and there. Systematic theology has 
pretended to build upon the Bible, but has by no means 
succeeded in so doing. The Reformation introduced 
a new life into Biblical interpretation. But it failed to 
carry out its promises. It set aside the authority of 
the Church, only to bind itself more tightly with the 
authority of the Book. Here it erred, but the seeds of 
religious freedom had been sown. Luther felt himself 
at liberty to reject certain books of the Old Testament 
as apocryphal, in spite of the testimony of the Jew and 
the Christian. This liberty has been further used by 
others since Luther, until it is now admitted that each 
individual book (and often each separate part of that 
book) must stand or fall upon its own merits. This 
led to a complete revolution in Old Testament study. 
All the old questions were reopened. Everything was 
questioned. 

3. A re-study of the work and methods of the scribes 
has revealed the fact that not so much care was taken 
in the copying of manuscripts as the Church had sup- 
posed. Many books had been copied many times ere 
they were regarded as sacred, and submitted to careful 
scribes for transcription. Psalm xviii. and 2 Samuel 
xxii. are the same, yet the Hebrew text contains over 
seventy variations of more or less importance. These 
seem to have crept in between the time of the original 



268 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

writing of the Song, and the time of its canonization in 
the twofold form in which we have it. This would be 
some time subsequent to Ezra (444). To be sure, some 
variations may be of later date, and this is very proba- 
ble. Isaiah ii. and Micah iv. illustrate the same fact. 
Reasoning by analogy, then, we are prepared to find 
the Hebrew text abounding in errors. All this shows 
the need of great care in the interpretation of difficult 
passages. We have no right to suppose that the words 
must mean something. From what has been said, it 
would seem more in accordance with the facts in our 
possession to say that the text is corrupt. Many pas- 
sages in the earlier prophets and in the Psalms are 
absolutely untranslatable. Either the text must be 
emended, or the rules of Hebrew grammar and syntax 
must be discarded. Professor Smith recognizes all these 
difficulties. He sees the danger of relying upon proof- 
texts, or of founding a doctrine upon a particular book 
or chapter. Here and there verses have been inter- 
polated. Perhaps they were written in the margin at 
first, and were later introduced into the body of the 
book. In other places objectionable words, terms, or 
phrases were left out. Just how much of all this has 
occurred we cannot say, but certainly much more than 
people generally are aware of. 

4. The sources at hand for restoring the Hebrew 
text are meagre. Unlike the New Testament, the Old, 
as we know it, goes back to a single recension. Little, 
then, can be gained by comparing one edition of the 
Hebrew Bible with another. But before the barbarous 
destruction of the great body of Hebrew Bibles, there 
were great differences in the existing copies. At least 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 269 

this was probably the case. And from one of these 
different manuscripts the Septuagint, or Greek transla- 
tion, was made during the years 275 to 100 B.C. The 
early critics of the Old Testament, being predisposed 
on a priori grounds to accept the Hebrew text as direct 
from the hand of the writer, gave little heed to the vari- 
ous readings preserved in the Septuagint. In modern 
times there has been a great change. Scholars have 
come to see that they have a treasure in the work of 
the Seventy. Often when the Hebrew is obscure the 
Greek is not. And, further, it often happens that 
when the Greek is translated back into Hebrew we get 
a text very nearly like that of our Bibles, an intelligible 
text, and one that might easily have given rise to the 
errors that the received text has perpetuated. Some- 
times neither bur Hebrew nor the Greek is able to 
throw light upon a doubtful passage. And all emenda- 
tions must be merely conjectural. Yet, even here, the 
way pointed out by the Septuagint has led to other 
corrections of the text that have been quite generally 
accepted. 

5. Early Hebrew being written without vowels, and 
without many of the vowel letters which distinguish 
one word from another, the difficulties in the way of 
one who would read a given text were enormous. In 
our Hebrew Bibles "son" and "between" are pro- 
nounced the same, but written differently. The one is 
ben, the other beyn, that is, it has the vowel letter. But 
originally both were written ben or more properly bn. 
The Septuagint, in scores of passages, clearly shows 
that its errors, or its superiority to the Hebrew text, 
are due to a difference of opinion as to whether the 
vowel letter should or should not be written. 



270 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Owing to the fact that the vowels were not written, 
we have entirely lost the pronunciation of many words. 
It is well known that there is no such word as Jehovah. 
What we have here are the consonants of one word and 
the vowels of another. When the Hebrew reader came 
to J-h-v-h, he did not pronounce Jehovah, neither did he 
say Jahveh, but Adonay, which is the ordinary word for 
Lord. J-h-v-h was a name too holy for his profane 
lips. 1 So, then, what vowels the proper name of the 
Jewish God contained no one knows. The vowels in 
our Hebrew Bibles were not put in till about one thou- 
sand years after the Hebrew became a dead language. 
Whether, then, a particular S — t is sit or sat or sate or 
is it ? is often a difficult problem to solve, and the mean- 
ing is quite materially affected by our decision. For 
example, Gen. xlvii. 31 tells us that "Israel bowed 
himself upon the bed's head." Heb. xi. 21, referring 
to the same event, says he was " leaning on the top of 
his staff." This illustrates the point ; for in Hebrew 
matteh is staff and. mitt ah is bed, the consonants being 
the same. In view of these facts, would it not be 
strange if a scribe were able to read his Torah twice 
alike ? 

6. Along with the evidences of corruption in the 
text has appeared testimony that several books, gener- 
ally supposed to be early, are in reality quite late. If 
we maintain the integrity of a book, its date must 
be as late as that of the latest event recorded. Pro- 
fessor Smith has argued ably in favor of distributing 

1 The LXX. translation of Lev. xxiv. 16, by a slight change from the 
Hebrew, reads, " He who pronounceth the name of the Lord shall be 
punished with death." 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 2JI 

the Pentateuch between the years 850 and 400 B.C. 
He adduces evidence to favor a late date for the 
great, body of the Psalms. Of these points, and many 
others of interest, I cannot speak in this brief sketch. 
It is sufficient to say that in the main the author 
is trustworthy, and his subject-matter is of such a 
nature that no pastor, however busy, can afford to 
remain in ignorance of it. 

Neither can the author, with justice, be called a 
destructive critic. He has done much in this series 
of lectures to reconstruct Hebrew history. He has 
done much to aid tbe student to a clearer compre- 
hension of Jahveh's plan with his chosen people. In 
the main, they are facts upon which he builds. I 
can vouch in many cases for this, and in others I can 
trust him. Whether he has drawn the legitimate con- 
clusions from his facts I leave it to the reader to 
decide. Our motto should be : First, what are the 
facts? Second, what do the facts mean? 1 

V. PROFESSOR DRIVER AND OLD TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION. 

i. I am glad to be able to recommend Dr. S. R. 
Driver's " Introduction to the Literature of the Old 
Testament." It is worthy of commendation without 
let or hindrance. To be sure, there are those whose 
prejudices blind their eyes to the facts, and these cry 
out against it. And they will continue to do so until 
they learn that pure and undefiled religion is injured, 
rather than aided, by external authority and moss- 

1 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church may now be had in a new 
and improved edition. 



272 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

covered apologetics. Again, on the other hand, the 
Expositor has published a series of articles by Prof. 
T. K. Cheyne, in which he takes the ground that the 
author of our " Introduction " has made too many and 
too great concessions to traditional views. In several 
places I am fully satisfied that this is so. But I am 
not alarmed at these things. Any forward step, taken 
honestly and cautiously, is worthy of all the support 
we can give it. The intellectual side of religion can- 
not be ignored. Half-truths, assiduously followed, are 
better than whole-truths sitting solitary. But I am by 
no means willing to admit that Dr. Driver's book is 
a congeries of half-truths, nor does Cheyne's criticism 
imply this. Except in a few minor points, he com- 
mends it, and, indeed, one must do so, whether he can 
accept the author's positions or not. 

2. Passing over the discussion as to the origin and 
date of the Hexateuch, or first six books of the Old 
Testament, we come to the Book of Judges. This 
book consists of a large number of stories and tradi- 
tions of early date, and all set to a particular text, the 
two episodes at the end of the book alone excepted. 
What is this text ? It is this : " Obey Jahveh and 
you will prosper ; disobey, and you perish." The move- 
ment is " apostasy, subjugation, penitence, and deliver- 
ance." Of some of the judges, the author knows 
almost nothing. He merely names them, and recites 
his text. There seems to be some evidence that the 
author went out of his way to get just twelve judges. 
The book of I Kings (vi. i) gives these forty years each, 
thus making the period of the judges last four hundred 
and eighty years. The chronology of the book itself is 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 2? $ 

four hundred and ten years. There are many striking 
resemblances to the Book of Joshua ; indeed, they are 
so minute in places as to force the admission that the 
two books are often parallel, and that the chronology 
of Judges and Kings is arbitrary. 

3. If attention is paid to the main body of the tradi- 
tion in the Book of Judges, it at once appears that the 
stories were at first purely secular, wholly devoid of 
ethical motive, and, further, that they were stories told 
for their own sakes alone. As we have them, they are 
worked over and set to the tune of " disobedience, pun- 
ishment, repentance, peace." Where did the author 
get this text ? It came, says Professor Driver, from 
the Book of Deuteronomy, as is clearly seen from a 
comparison with several passages, especially chapter 
xxviii. The date assigned for Deuteronomy is 622, 
the eighteenth year of Josiah. 2 Kings xxiii. tells of 
the discovery of a book which made a profound impres- 
sion, and was adopted by the people and their ruler 
as their law. Would a book making such a profound 
impression as this did, be allowed to get lost ? If 
not, we must have the book somewhere between the 
lids of our Bible. If now we compare Deuteronomy 
with the story referred to in Kings, we find that the 
people began to do exactly those things which Deu- 
teronomy commands. Further, the people confess that 
they did not know before that Jehovah had commanded 
these things. Deuteronomy puts several things under 
a ban that earlier prophets had regarded as perfectly 
orthodox. Hosea laments the day when they will have 
to worship without pillars. Deuteronomy says they 
shall not have these pillars. Driver piles up the evi- 



274 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

dence in favor of his theory. Much more is to be 
had for the asking. But enough has been said to 
indicate the argument in outline. These things being 
so, it remains to conclude that the Book of Judges was 
written after 622, though older written accounts may 
have been used. 

4. The general run of Bible students have been left 
to believe that while Isaiah did not write chapters xl.- 
lxvi. of our Book of Isaiah, he did write chapters i.-xxxix. 
Professor Driver thinks the time has come when the 
intelligent Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Episcopa- 
lian, etc., should be taught differently, because always 
in the end truth is more conducive to morality and 
religion than error. 

5. Isaiah xiii. and xiv. 1-23 are not Isaiah's. They 
represent the Jews as in exile. Social and political 
conditions wholly alien to Isaiah and his times are 
implied. Babylon and Media are mentioned by name, 
and these were scarcely even names to the Jews of 
Isaiah's time. Had the words come from Isaiah, they 
must have been wholly without effect upon the people, 
because they would have been unintelligible. This 
section, then, " can only be attributed to an author 
living towards the close of the exile.' ' 

6. As to chapters xv. and xvi., Professor Driver does 
not pronounce positively. He thinks Isaiah may have 
written them. The majority of modern critics are 
more inclined to the view that they are older than 
Isaiah, though perhaps modified by him, or added to his 
oracles by an editor. Renan, by a brilliant assumption, 
gives them to Jonah, a prophet of some note who is 
mentioned in the Book of Kings as an earlier contem- 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 2J 5 

porary of Amos and Hosea. Chapter xxi. i-io is an 
oracle by itself, without connection with what precedes 
or follows, and though beginning indefinitely, concludes 
with a prediction of the fall of Babylon. This did not 
take place till one hundred and fifty years after Isaiah's 
death. Neither was Babylon an enemy at this time, 
for Merodach Baladan had sent friendly greetings to 
Hezekiah, Isaiah's favorite king. The view that this 
section is not Isaiah's is rapidly gaining ground, and 
even so conservative a critic as Franz Delitzsch assigns 
it to the days of Cyrus. 

7. If chapters xxiv.-xxvii. are also denied to Isaiah, 
he can no longer be called the greatest of the Hebrew 
prophets; for, as is well known, xxxvi. -xxxix. are his- 
torical and are contained almost verbatim in the Book 
of Kings. Any one acquainted with Hebrew history, 
and deeply enough interested in it to be able to sympa- 
thize with the ideas and ideals of its respective epochs, 
cannot fail to agree with Professor Driver in saying 
that these chapters are not Isaiah's. Agreements, ver- 
bal and other, with Joel and the later books ; changes 
of emphasis in the statement of the Messianic ideal, 
that would have been out of place in Isaiah or his age, 
together with linguistic and other peculiarities, all point 
to an age more than a century later than that of Heze- 
kiah and his prophet. 

8. Evidently, much of what has been said above will 
fail to carry conviction, because of a lack of familiarity 
with the main details of the social and political history 
of the Hebrew people. But it is just this history which 
is in dispute. And, as the main source of Hebrew his- 
tory is the Bible, we must date the books and parts of 



276 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

books of that Bible ere we can write the history. Some 
of the points in this history are fixed, however. Some 
of the results of criticism have also won acceptance 
from a large public. With thes'e as known we must 
proceed to the unknown. History and criticism must 
work hand in hand. And the wise student of the Old 
Testament will read widely in both. 

I have chosen to speak of that part of Driver's book 
where he is most " destructive." Jeremiah and Eze- 
kiel still stand, practically intact, and are snugly fitted 
into the dates given them by the tradition of the 
Church. Some of the minor prophets are likewise left 
unharmed (!) by the higher criticism. I grow to love 
Amos and Hosea more and more every day. What is 
good and worthy is never harmed by criticism. The 
great prophets and sages of the Old Testament stand 
forth greater, nobler, and in a truer sense inspired, after 
the higher criticism has purged away the dross. I 
appeal to those who are prone to sarcasm when they 
speak of the higher criticism, to give an instance 
where it has harmed religion, opposed good morals, or 
weakened the authority of truth. The scalawags will 
always gather around the liberals. Is it because the 
liberals have something for them while the others have 
not ? At any rate, David was a liberal and an outlaw, 
and the scalawags flocked about him. Saul could not 
do anything with them, but David made men of them 
at last. It was not David's fault that the debtors and 
libertines flocked to his standard. It wo?t/dha.ve been 
his fault had he given them nothing to do. It is not 
good policy to oppose the modern liberal movement in 
Biblical criticism, nor is it good taste to criticise it from 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 277 

insufficient data. I fully agree with Isaiah (xxxii. 5-8) 
when he says the days will come when " the vile person 
shall be no more called liberal. . . . But the liberal 
will devise liberal things, and by liberal things shall he 
stand." Isaiah knew the meaning of these words, for 
he was a liberal in his day. But truth was on his side, 
and he won at last. 

VI. THE MEN OF THE BIBLE. 

I. A good way to master the history or the litera- 
ture of any people is to read the lives of their great 
men. It is becoming a quite common thing to study 
Bible history and literature in this way. Just as soon 
as we give up the idea that the Bible is a unit, each 
book teaching the same things, we detect fine shades of 
meaning in one writer not found in another, or we 
detect adherence to a very different moral code in the 
lives of men so wide apart as Gideon, Solomon, and 
Jeremiah. It is evidently worth our while then to 
heed differences as well as agreements in the Biblical 
authors. And, so far as possible, it should be our aim 
to detect here the gradual unfolding of the moral and 
religious life, as the people become able to receive and 
profit by the progressing revelations of God. 

When one man writes a history of Israel emphasiz- 
ing this evolution of the God-consciousness, the reader 
may say his history is dogmatic. He has set out with 
the express intention of making Abraham less perfect 
than Josiah, Hosea less helpful than 2 Isaiah. 

The " Men of the Bible " series is out of the reach 
of the above charge, owing to the fact that the series 
has many authors who are of different schools. Here 



278 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

all shades of opinion are represented. To me the 
books seem to differ widely in merit. Some of them 
persist in teaching errors of long standing, while tacitly- 
confessing that the facts are against them. Four in 
the series are strong, up to the times, and positively 
inspiring to the preacher and the student. These are 
" Solomon " and " Minor Prophets " by Farrar, " Jere- 
miah " by Cheyne, and " Isaiah " by Driver. I am 
surprised at the freedom with which Farrar moves 
among his materials ; surprised at the ease with which 
he abandons the opinions of his younger days when 
the facts are presented to his view. This is a rare 
good quality. Most of us stop thinking too young. 
It is easier to turn the " barrel " over and begin again, 
than it is to revise our writings, our lives, and our 
thoughts in the light of the world's new advances. A 
young man once confessed to me that he was no longer 
Orthodox, but that he intended to preach in an Ortho- 
dox church, because all his thinking and writing had 
been along Orthodox lines. More worthy pf admira- 
tion is the man who has not only the courage but the 
energy of his convictions. 

2. The books in this series are lives of the men 
whose names they bear. And a striking confirmation 
of what I have said above comes to me from the life of 
Jeremiah as told by Jeremiah's book (if read chrono- 
logically, otherwise one might as well read a diction- 
ary) or by the life of that prophet by Cheyne, which is 
under review. Jeremiah changed his opinions very 
materially in the middle of his ministry. His early 
views of divine inspiration and of divine judgment 
were crude and harsh. And he almost " accused God 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 279 

to his face," when he came to the point where he must 
decide, once for all, whether he would live and die in 
the old views, or move on to better and nobler ones. 
Jeremiah's was a deep, tender, sympathetic nature, and 
his struggle was a hard one, but the best conquered. 
And we owe it to this victory that Jeremiah is reck- 
oned among the greatest of the world's prophets. The 
story of Jeremiah's life is as < interesting as that of 
Goethe's or Carlyle's. Isaiah's life is as thrilling as is 
that of Webster or Phillips. Solomon's as broad and 
grand as that of a Caesar, a Louis, or a Henry. And 
why should not these Bible characters be studied by 
all as well as those of secular history? Has not each 
of these great ones of the Hebrews had a powerful in- 
fluence on the secular history of to-day ? What Roman 
lawgiver speaks more widely or with deeper authority 
, to-day than Moses ? What great orator has not been 
inspired by the Hebrew prophets ? What great histo- 
rian does not owe it, directly or otherwise, to some un- 
known Hebrew, that he writes history with a noble 
purpose ? We need to appreciate more fully the fact 
that the Bible characters are first and foremost men, — 
men who lived intensely human and intensely interest- 
ing lives. Along this line I cannot forbear adding a 
word of the publishers of this series : " To the student 
and the general reader these volumes will be found 
alike useful and interesting ; and the question may well 
be asked, why the intelligent reader should not find 
the lives of the great men of the Bible as useful or as 
fascinating as the story of those who have won a con- 
spicuous place in the annals of secular history." 

3, Professor Toy has been pleading recently for more 



280 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESI^AMENT 

expository preaching. With this plea I fully agree. It 
is largely the preacher's place, and especially must it be 
the work of the liberal minister, to interest the public 
more deeply in the moral, secular, and literary sides of 
the lives of the great Hebrew authors and statesmen. 
I incline to think that, on the whole, the story of the 
life of a righteous man is a more powerful sermon on 
righteousness than one which would commonly go by 
that name. I believe in the biographical sermon. And 
especially is this the better way to preach Old Testa- 
ment religion. Cheyne's "Jeremiah, his Life and 
Times," is " a course of sermons " preached in Rochester 
Cathedral. Apparently he finds the plan successful, 
for this was his second course of a somewhat extended 
nature and of a biographical character. I have had occa- 
sion to say recently to one of our divinity students : Do 
not go too exclusively to sermons for your inspirations, 
and your models, but go to books. Read widely among 
the freshest and best books, and let the sermons teach 
the lessons of books. A sermon boiled down from a book 
is concise, intense, powerful. A sermon built up from 
another sermon or sermons is too often weak and inef- 
fectual. For thought loses in the transmission. I 
speak now only of the " booky " side of .the sermon, 
for always the best sermons come primarily from the 
preacher's own life and work. Yet these sources are 
not wholly disseparate, for a man's chosen books are 
also along the line of his work and his deepest soul 
experiences. 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 28 1 



VII. J. F. GENUNG AND THE BOOK OF JOB. 

I. There are several good books on Job. One of the 
best and most recent is entitled " The Epic of the Inner 
Life," by John F. Genung. 

The introductory study consists of four essays, and 
this is followed by a new translation and notes. And 
in every part the work is neatly and ably performed. 
The Book of Job possesses more than a religious inter- 
est. It is one of the great books of the world. The 
most careful literary critics have long been wont to 
pronounce it such. It deals with a question that is not 
narrow nor provincial, but deep and broad as human na- 
ture itself. Neither is the technique of the book in any 
way of such a nature as to limit it to a single people 
or a single age. It is a cause of serious trouble to 
the critic, that in the book there is almost no allusion 
to Hebrew life and history. But it is this very omission 
on the part of the author that has helped to lift his 
book above the temporal and transient. 

I said the Book of Job dealt with a problem of uni- 
versal interest and in a manner that accords with the 
most lofty literary ideals. Yet, strangely enough, till 
Mr. Genung wrote of Job, no one had thought of com- 
bining these two facts as a basis for the interpretation 
of the book. A glance at some of the interpretations 
given will show how widely scholars disagree. J. A. 
Froude says, " It teaches many lessons, but not any one 
prominent above another;" Professor Conant, "the 
mysteries of God's providential government of men." 
Franz Delitzsch thought it answered the question, 



282 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

"Why does suffering on suffering befall the right- 
eous ? " Others say the theme is, " Doth Job fear God 
for nought ? " None of these answers suffice. As an 
argument the Book of Job is weak. Indeed, by what 
reason do we affirm that it was intended for an argu- 
ment ? The speakers often ignore each other, and 
more often they wander wide of the mark. Many of 
Job's speeches ignore the friends altogether. Indeed, 
Genung makes Job say that his are "a despairing 
man's words to the wind," p. 169. He does not profess 
to stand by his words in case he is freed from his pains. 
As an answer to the problem of human suffering, the 
Book of Job is unsatisfactory indeed. Elihu does not 
solve the question ; God speaking from the whirlwind 
does not solve it. Any one who goes to Job for a logi- 
cal solution — a solution that will satisfy the pure 
reason — of the problem of evil, will be doomed to dis- 
appointment. Indeed, I remember to have read, while 
in college, a review article in which the author argued 
that all this was intentional. God inspired the Book of 
Job, purposely making the solution incomplete, because 
no other solution was possible till Christ came. The 
question left unanswered in Jpb is answered in Christ. 
The last statement is perhaps true enough, but did 
the author of Job write with any such denouement in 
mind ? 

The facts in the case are these : Job's three friends 
represented the orthodoxy of the day. This was to the 
effect that the good prosper and the wicked suffer, and 
conversely. Job's is an experience that will not fit the 
rule ; hence the dialogue. Evidently, unless Job is a 
historic character, the author has assumed the whole 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 283 

solution from the beginning. Much may be said on 
either side of the question as to whether Job is an his- 
torical personage. Ezekiel mentions a Job that seems 
to coincide with ours. On the other hand, it is diffi- 
cult to suppose that the prologue in heaven, and the 
finished speeches of Job and his friends, all happened as 
narrated. Further, I think nothing would be gained 
for ethics and religion in any case. These things do 
not rest upon an authority that is external. 

2. So then, according to Mr. Genung, the aim of the 
author of Job is not to prove, but to show. The He- 
brews were not theoretical, but practical. A proof of 
the existence of, a just and merciful God they would 
not have cared for. But a story in which God is repre- 
sented as creating the world would have had a wide in- 
fluence. The critics think they find evidence that the 
story of Elijah is legendary. But to the later Jews the 
story was an unanswerable argument in favor of a res- 
urrection. Did then some one invent it to deceive ? 
No. The child-race, like the child, is often unable to 
distinguish between what it has sensed and what it has 
thought. My two-year-old boy, the other day, called 
his mother to the window to see a dead squirrel lying 
on the grass in the rain. He felt much grieved because 
his mother would not go out and get the " poor dead 
squirrel." There was no squirrel there. Was the child 
lying ? I think not. He was able to imagine, not able 
to distinguish between fact and fancy. " Imagination 
rules the world." All early peoples argue by means of 
the story. They tell a story that will account for the 
facts, and this in time passes into a doctrine. 

3. Genung believes, and I think with reason, that it 



284 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

is Job himself, and not the 'Book of Job, that solves the 
problem of evil. The dialogue is subsidiary. The 
friends are introduced as a background for the picture. 
" Under these discourses we are to trace, not the build- 
ing of a system, but the progress of a character, tried, 
developed, victorious." Again Genung says, "Job's 
life, as it is traced in the glowing, indignant, faith- 
inspired words of his complaint, is the triumphant an- 
swer. Job does fear God for nought." Not by his 
reason, but by his life, Job has answered the question : 
he has suffered, being virtuous, and has continued in 
his integrity. He did serve God, and that because it 
was right to do so, not because God rewarded him for 
the service. 

4. As to the date of Job, Genung seems to me to 
place the book too early by three hundred years. Job 
must evidently take its place along side the more met- 
aphysical of the Psalms ; and Cheyne, in his Bampton 
Lectures for 1889, has left us in little doubt as to where 
these belong. Further, the Satan of Job coincides with 
this period, and there are other reasons for saying that 
the Book of Job was composed not far from 400 B.C. 

So, too, our author inclines strongly towards the in- 
tegrity of the book. Undoubtedly the book is in many 
ways stronger for containing chapter xxviii., on "wis- 
dom," and the closely reasoned speech of Elihu in chap- 
ters xxxii.-xxxvii. 

5. As to the character of the composition, Genung, 
as his title suggests, calls Job an epic. Others, with 
much show of reason, call it a drama. It certainly 
contains elements of both. 

Genung's translation of Job is worthy of highest 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 285 

praise. He has revivified old expressions, and added 
many new and happy ones. Throughout the style is 
noble and strong. There is a graceful abandon to the 
modern spirit. The worn-out talk of the creeds nowhere 
appears. Here is a strong couplet on page 158 : 

" For evil goeth not forth from the dust, 
Nor is it from the ground that trouble springeth." 

Another often-quoted passage appears in, 

" Kindness from his friend is due to the despairing, 
Who is losing hold of the fear of the Almighty.'' 

.The last verse of chapter ix. is well rendered by the 
words : 

" For as I am now I am not myself." 

A moment spent in comparing this translation with 
that of our Bibles will convince the reader of the su- 
periority of the former. As Genung suggests, our 
Bible is like a composite photograph, all striking indi- 
vidualities are obliterated. Job and Kings, Psalms and 
Jeremiah, read much alike. We lose quite as much as 
we gain by having many translators. Genung has 
preserved individualities. 

The Hebrew text has been carefully followed, too 
carefully in places, it seems to me. Where the text is 
manifestly corrupt, and all helps fail, a happy guess is 
less liable to perpetuate error than is a meek submission 
to a text that violates Hebrew taste and Hebrew gram- 
mar. On page 161 occurs a passage that illustrates 
the point : — 

"So from the sword, from their mouth, 
And from the hand of the strong, — he rescueth the needy." 



286 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The reader cannot but experience a jar when he 
comes to this couplet. The "from their mouth" does 
not fit, it does not make sense. Something is the mat- 
ter. From the analogy of the following line we may 
correct with comparative assurance. Following the 
suggestion of Professor Toy, the verse will read : — 

" So from the sword of the oppressor, 

And from the hand of the strong, he rescueth the needy." 

The notes appended to the translation are just enough 
to delight the busy. They elucidate the meaning, and 
explain forgotten customs. They let the author of Job 
do most of the talking, which is an elegant idea. And 
the book will, I predict, do much to extend, in the 
circles of the rich and the learned, the influence of the 
marvellous Hebrew Epic. 

VIII. renan: his life and his work. 

i. "The two greatest intellectual forces in France at 
this moment," says some one, " are M. Renan and M. 
Taine." * And the author of a careful study of Renan 
in a recent number of the Quarterly Review continues : 
" Probably that is so : certainly of these two eminent 
writers, M. Renan is just now incomparably the more 
influential." As for myself, I like Renan. I am by no 
means able to estimate him, and give him his place 
among his contemporaries. I do know, however, that 
many able preachers are stimulated by Renan. 

Some of these follow him closely, others read him 
just as carefully for his inimitable style, and his mas- 

1 Renan and Taine have both died since this was written. 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 28/ 

tery of modern culture, and his inerrancy in the inter- 
pretation of certain phases of the " Zeitgeist." Renan 
is not a superficial scholar, as some have supposed. He 
has done some of the most careful and laborious work 
in the interpretation of Semitic inscriptions, life, and 
religion. His " Life of Jesus " is ideal, yes, far enough 
from the truth in many ways, no doubt. Yet I question 
whether Renan has not approached nearer to the real 
Jesus than Strauss or Geikie. Certainly much of Re- 
nan's exegesis agrees with " Gospel Criticism and His- 
torical Christianity" against traditional views. Renan 
has been called "the theological dude." The epithet is 
a happy one. There are perhaps two reasons why it 
should fit Renan. His ancestry and his religious experi- 
ence have both contributed to make him what he is. 
I believe he himself says that there are two Renans ; 
one is a scholar, the other a poet ; one is a sceptic, the 
other is an ardent spiritualist ; one is a Breton, the other 
a Gascon. Renan is a man of letters, and one of the 
greatest, but he is primarily a philologist and a theolo- 
gian. When scholar and poet meet in a Cousin, a Caird, 
or a Schopenhauer, no one is amazed. But when these 
meet in a theologian, because the union is more rare, 
the critics will be more adverse. But it is not Renan's 
literary style that makes him most liable to the title 
"dude." At any rate, it would seem that his religious 
experience must here be taken into account. Renan 
was intended for the Church, and his early ideas were 
orthodox enough. But his mind was too broad for the 
creed that was given him. He outgrew the Christian- 
ity that France offered him. And it is a hard matter 
to grow liberal without losing one's equilibrium. The 



288 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

majority, perhaps, take refuge in absolute denial or in 
ecclesiastical symbolism. Renan was too much of a 
man to adopt either of these alternatives. A sincere 
priest he could not be ; yet he loved religion the more 
now that he had ceased to view the world with the eyes 
of religion, and began to view religion with the eyes of 
the world. " He parted with all that his heart loved, 
and turned his face towards a strange land. He went 
with the doubt whether he should have bread to eat or 
raiment to put on." He himself says, " Mon coeur a 
besoin du Chris tianisme ; V Evangile sera toujours ma 
morale, I f Eglise a fait mon Education, je I 'aime. " And 
the world loves a man who talks like that. It is no 
wonder that the "Life of Jesus" "took the world by 
storm." Here is a heart that has bled for every word 
of it. And the great, sad world knows the heart that 
sympathizes with it. We must not be misled by what 
at times seems a flippant and joking mood in our 
author. It was this very gaiete in him that saved him 
to the world. Can't we believe that he has wrestled 
seriously with his doubts unless he whine ? May we 
not take him at his word when he says, " I am double, 
sometimes one part of me laughs while the other 
weeps. That is the explanation of my gaiete" ? I 
can pardon Renan when he says harsh things of my 
favorites as readily as I pardon others for dragging 
me mercilessly over scraps of litany and prayer-book to 
the fresher treasures of their thought. Neither do I 
fear his scepticism. Indeed, he strengthens my faith, 
just as a reading of Schopenhauer confirms my opti- 
mism. Renan's gaiete overdoes the thing, and this always 
brings the weight of him around to the positive side. 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 289 

He regards the world as an "immense practical joke," 
he tells us as much, and that in his scepticism he finds 
the happiness of his life. The life of the " theological 
dude" was above reproach. His doubts are not the out- 
growth of animal passions or epicurean tastes. The 
late Professor Elmslie, in an excellent sermon on the 
Seventy-third Psalm, says : " It does seem just possible 
that the good Christian Church we belong to in our 
time is not in quite the right way of thinking about 
religious doubt. I am not talking about the doubt of 
the head, the intellectual and the schools-intellectual 
fencing, that sort of triviality ; let it alone, it is not 
worth taking notice of. But the real doubt of any age, 
the doubt of any man's heart and head — what are we 
to think of that ? Are we to stamp it as devilish ? 
Are we to denounce it and excommunicate it ? Why, 
we might be fighting against God. If I read my Bible 
aright, real, genuine, patient struggle for faith means 
just the birth-throes of God's revelation of himself in 
men's hearts." Renan is emphatically the child of his 
age. His power lies in his ability to " reveal in peo- 
ple's minds ideas or sentiments which are tending to 
the birth." I believe he is in the birth-throes of 
God's new revelation. The mediaeval creeds we have 
outgrown, but the feelings which were wedded to 
them are more tenacious. " Though feeling is before 
thought;" yet "thought is for feeling," and the feel- 
ings for which our modern thoughts exist are yet to 
be born in us. The poet and the prophet of this 
new poetry and new religion are, perhaps, not very far 
away. To my notion, Renan has saved most that 
is good in Christianity and Judaism. He has done 



29O LEISUREL Y RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

much to unite ethics and religion " in the beauty of 
holiness." If he has been rash at times, if he has 
made too little of his opportunities to enlarge and 
fortify the borders of theism and morality, if he has 
thrown away too much of the Bible because it was 
supernatural, it is because he was carried away with 
the deeper poetry of the Old Testament, the deeper 
piety of the New. In the reaction against supernat- 
uralism several of the greatest of modern scholars 
have seemingly gone too far. And it is they who 
must answer for the absurdities of the spiritualists, 
theosophists, and Christian scientists. Kant said a 
sensible thing when he said, " Sensible people will- 
ingly admit in theory that miracles are possible ; but 
in the business of life they count upon none." 

2. Some of Renan's critics think that the weaknesses 
of the spirit of the age to which he has yielded will 
render his work transient. I doubt if this is so. The 
" Life of Jesus " is a work of art, and deserves a place 
alongside the best writings of Montaigne and Hugo. 
But I set out to speak of Renan's " History of the 
People of Israel." Three volumes are out — there is to 
be another — the set covering the whole period of He- 
brew history from the earliest times till the dawn of 
Christianity. Here, too, we have a work of art. The 
author has given to the subject the study of a lifetime. 
He writes of what he loves, and he writes with the 
skill of France's greatest man of letters. It is a com- 
pliment to Hebrew history to be adorned and inter- 
preted by such a man. Little as may be one's interest 
in the subject, Renan's History will command the at- 
tention of the reader. His comments upon the proph- 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS, 29 1 

ets are especially apt. A chapter in the third volume 
bears the suggestive title, " First Appearance of So- 
cialism." I quote from the preface the author's word 
of self-defence : " I have been blamed for having, in 
the previous volume, drawn too many comparisons be- 
tween the ancient events, which I am relating, and 
movements of the present day. It is not my fault, if, 
in the present volume, I have again been led to offend, 
in this respect, the susceptibility of rhetoricians. The 
history of ancient Judaism is the most striking instance 
of the opposition of political and social questions. The 
thinkers of Israel were the first to revolt against the 
injustice of the world, to refuse their submission to 
the inequalities, the abuses, and the privileges, without 
which there can neither be an army nor a strong 
society. ... Here we have a lesson upon which mod- 
ern nations cannot reflect too much." Renan's " His- 
tory of the People of Israel " is used as a text-book in 
a leading American university. As a piece of scholar- 
ship it is both brilliant and careful, abounding in strik- 
ing comparisons between a past that Renan has made 
living, and a present that the Church has too often 
made dead. 

3. Read Renan ! He does not follow the beaten 
track. He will give the head many a jar, and the heart 
many a jolt. He will lead you to many places where 
you did not wish to go. He will constrain you to gaze 
down many a chasm that you have never before dared 
approach. At the time it will often appear foolhardy 
and useless, but afterwards you will thank him for tak- 
ing the lead into his own hands ; thank him for taking 
you where you had not asked to go. If, instead of 



292 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

buying the insipid Bible Histories that are foisted on 
the public, " sold only by subscription/' the people of 
the country would buy and read a history like this, how 
the Bible would grow in public esteem ! 

IX. PROFESSOR TOY'S JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

I. A book which I prize very highly, and one that 
gives a guiding sensation on any topic in regard to 
which I consult it, is Prof. Crawford H. Toy's "Juda- 
ism and Christianity." This book is at once an Old 
and New Testament theology. • It is carefully in- 
dexed ; and there is a full list of the Scripture passages 
quoted and expounded, together with a second index 
of subjects discussed. It is thus a book that all Bible 
students should have at hand for reference. 

Professor Toy is widely and favorably known as an 
Old Testament scholar of the first order. Amidst the 
mass of his materials he moves with a lofty indepen- 
dence. Yet he is never hasty, never rash. He is the 
most fair, the most careful, the most deferential of crit- 
ics. He can be called radical only by those who fail to 
read the signs of the times. To those who have an eye 
on the character of the work being done by some of the 
younger scholars, Professor Toy appears as a conser- 
vative. He is firmly set against many new hypotheses 
that would in the end completely conform the Bible to 
dogmatic standards, and rob us of all confidence in the 
integrity of the Hebrew documents and credibility of 
the Hebrew histories. It is as a positive defender of 
the true kernel of Hebrew religion that Professor Toy 
will be known to the future. As a teacher, and I speak 
as his pupil, he never fails to bring out all that is no- 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 293 

blest and best, most truly spiritual and most truly moral 
in the sacred records. He loves the book he teaches, 
and he inspires his pupils with a kindred affection. 
But it is all in the clear light of intellect. There is no 
sentiment, no gush, no use of a personal magnetism 
with its temporary effects. A word of which he is es- 
pecially fond, and one that ought to grow in favor with 
all liberal Christians, is " moral-intellectual." His en- 
thusiasm is for a rational morality. It would not, per- 
haps, be far out of the way to apply to him the words 
of Kuenen's translator, P. H. Wicksteed : " Kuenen 
never threw his personality into the scale. If he es- 
tablished a point, you were as sure of it a year after- 
ward, when he was not there, as you were when you 
sat before him." 

2. The author begins with Judaism, because it is not 
till then that we have Old Testament religion. Previ- 
ous to Ezra, there is no attempt at system and doctrine. 
The prophets stand each upon his own authority. 
There is no history of the Hebrew people that is author- 
itative. There are several codes of laws, differing 
more or less widely among themselves, and of varying 
degrees of authority ; but then there is no Old Testa- 
ment canon. No doubt many books that have been 
since lost were in existence, were widely read, and were 
quoted as authorities. With Ezra begins a new order. 
The first canon is formed, the laws of the first five 
books of the Old Testament are regarded as divine and 
authoritative. Jewish religion is now, for the first time, 
reduced to something like a system. Old Testament 
theology, then, really begins with Ezra, not before, and 
continues from this time till the dawn of Christianity. 



294 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN- THE OLD TESTAMENT 

This method of treating the subject is rapidly coming 
to be recognized as the true one. Previous to Ezra, we 
have Isaiah's theology, Jeremiah's theology, and so on, 
but no authorized body of Jewish theology. By a 
strange paradox, as soon as the Hebrews began to 
recognize the new individualism of Ezekiel, the powers 
of the individual as such ceased. The great names are 
wiped out, and the indefinite and impersonal Torah 
comes in as the sole authority. To expound this great 
body of Hebrew doctrine, and trace its development up 
to the point of its absorption into Christianity, is the 
task our author has set himself. 

3. " Judaism and Christianity" consists of an introduc- 
tion and eight carefully written chapters of varying 
length. The introduction is a sociological study. 
Religion is recognized as a branch of sociology. It is 
a product of human thought, wrought out by the race 
in its conflicts with the world without and the world 
within. Religion cannot sever itself from the society 
of which it is a part. It must work in and through 
society ; and is inevitably subject to the same "laws of 
growth, arrest, retrogression, and decay." If a particu- 
lar religion cannot reform society, it must perish with 
it. Also, conversely, if a society lacks the power to 
conform its religion to its material and intellectual 
growth, that religion must eventually yield to stagnation 
and decay. Society must progress harmoniously, or all 
progress is make-believe. Still, Professor Toy would 
be the last to accuse any particular society. " It is 
very doubtful whether the term, ' arrest of growth/ can 
be used of China in any proper sense." 

Religion, as a branch of sociology, depends upon the 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 295 

organization of the social life for the character and 
direction of its development. The more complex and 
the more highly organized a particular society, the 
greater will be the problem of religion to produce unity 
in the midst of this diversity. A growing society must 
have a growing religion. Politics and law, science and 
philosophy, ethics and aesthetics, all have a marked 
influence upon religion, as religion on them. It is a 
mistake to suppose that, for example, religion and 
morality have always been allies. In many phases of 
society their development has been largely indepen- 
dent. It is the purpose of sociology, and more espe- 
cially of religion, viewed from the broader view-point of 
social science, to unite more and more these various 
phases of human endeavor. Religion must, at any cost, 
keep in touch with the intellectual and moral, civil and 
artistic prog'ress of society. But while thus keep- 
ing en rapport, it must remember that " the absolute 
power of any given religion will be in proportion to the 
p Ur ity — that is, the spirituality — of its dogma, and the 
elevation of its moral ideal. ,, 

4. One of the chief elements in the progress of reli- 
gion and society Professor Toy finds to be the great 
man. I am glad that he has written as he has upon 
this subject; for I grow more and more to think that 
here we have not only the key to history, but the solu- 
tion, so far as they can be solved, of the divine incarna- 
tions, Isaiah, Ezra, Paul, and Jesus. " History proceeds 
by crises, and a crisis implies a great man." The great 
man is always the child of his age. He goes to his age 
for the raw material of his thought. Yet, our author 
continues, "we may demonstrate the man's relation to 



296 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

his past, exhibit the circle of ideas in which he grows 
up, and perceive the connection between his thought 
and that of his times ; but in the last analysis, when we 
reach the creative moment, it is impossible to give the 
history of the process. There is a mystery in his men- 
tal experiences, in the way in which he seizes on the 
problem, combines its elements, and reaches his re- 
sult. ... It is a mystery that meets us in every 
department of human life ; when we have called it 
genius, intuition, or inspiration, so far from defining 
it, we have only labelled it with a name that defies 
definition." 

5. Professor Toy finds that the great mass of the 
religions of the world are inert. They lack the power 
to conform themselves to the rapid advances of society. 
It is probable, then, that in time a few great religions 
will control the world. The three that are now worthy 
to be called universal religions are Mohammedanism, 
Buddhism, and Christianity. The last is decidedly the 
superior. It contains the good of each of the others, 
and more. It is the most moral and the most spiritual. 
Further, Christianity is a life, and life possesses infinite 
powers of adaptation. Lastly, and not of least impor- 
tance, Christianity is the religion of the " civilized and 
civilizing nations of the world." Christianity is the 
religion of the aggressive, the intellectual, and the virile 
in our own age. 

6. It is on this broad basis that the religion of 
the Bible is discussed. The method of treatment is 
throughout historical and exhaustive. Ewald, in his 
" Biblical Theology," professes to take the good and 
cast the bad away. He ignores what he regards as low 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 297 

and unspiritual. For popular use such a treatment has 
its advantages. All literatures deserve just such sym- 
pathetic treatment. But this is not the whole truth. 
And there are always some who desire to know the 
whole truth. They believe that to over-estimate the 
past is to be unjust to the present. Professor Toy 
attempts to give the whole truth. He traces the de- 
velopment of a particular idea from its beginning to 
the close of the apostolic age. If there are divergent 
and contradictory ideas, these too are set forth. Abso- 
lute accuracy is not claimed. The question is, rather, 
what may we reasonably infer from the documents in 
our possession ? It may be well to say, however, that 
the best defence of the Bible doctrine of God, man, and 
human society is a faithful, accurate, scientific state- 
ment of how the best in the Bible finally triumphed 
over the worst. All sorts of pernicious doctrines were 
clamoring for acceptance while the Bible was being 
written. At times the Bible is itself tainted with 
these ; yet in the end, and in spite of evils advocated 
by men of influence and intelligence, the good was 
victorious and Christianity went forth to re-create the 
world. I repeat, the best defence of Biblical religion is 
just such a comparative study of the books as Professor 
Toy has given us. In each later book some new good 
has triumphed. Something that was earthly and sen- 
sual has been shuffled off. There is a slow, sure prog- 
ress from Moses to Christ. And in the great body of 
the human race there has been a steady advance from 
the dawn of Christianity to the present day. Professor 
Toy believes that Christianity has the power to adapt 
itself to each and all of society's advances, and thus 



298 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

continue to be a living power for good in the world. 
The development that led up to Christ did not stop 
with early Christianity. 

X. CANON CHEYNE AND DEVOUT CRITICISM. 

I. It gives me pleasure to have such books as Canon 
Cheyne's to recommend. And especially am I re- 
joiced to be able to commend such a book as "Aids to 
the Devout Study of Criticism/' Many of Professor 
Cheyne's books are of so profound a nature that they 
can be appreciated and enjoyed only by specialists. 
But he is a man who believes that the specialist is 
also the best man to popularize his own work, and set 
it in order for the general reader. There is certainly a 
measure of truth, at least, in this. The specialist is 
better able than another to set forth the exact truth, 
and in its true proportions. Sometimes he will miss 
the argument or illustration that would be most effec- 
tive. Often he will have less enthusiastic praise from ' 
the people he aims to serve. But in the long run such 
a man is the safest guide. 

In this kind of work Canon Cheyne is no novice. 
He has written several volumes of sermons, and they 
have been widely read, and have warranted the con- 
clusions to which the Canon has arrived; viz., that the 
results of criticism should be presupposed in, and made 
the dogmatic basis of, modern preaching. By some the 
sermons will be accounted prosy. And to a certain ex- 
tent such a criticism is just. Yet there is no lack of ima- 
gination. The difficulty, if difficulty it is, is in the kind 
of imagination. The historical and constructive imagi- 
nation has not been prevailingly used in the composition 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 299 

of sermons. Those who paint fine pictures often do it 
at the expense of the truth. It is often argued that the 
higher criticism is overfull of assumptions. Let him 
who so argues acquit his favorite preacher of similar 
" assumptions " if he can. In his restrained, reason- 
guided imagination, Canon Cheyne seems to me to imi- 
tate the great writers in the literature of which he is so 
fond. And I believe that this same method of com- 
municating the truths of the gospel is destined to mul- 
tiply in the future. There are those who love fine 
words ; there are more (and the number is increasing) 
who love the truth clearly and plainly set forth more 
than they love fine words. 

2. " Aids to the Devout Study of Criticism " con- 
sists of two parts, "The David Narratives " and "The 
Book of Psalms. " In the first part the author is to be 
thanked for making accessible to English readers the 
analysis of the books of Samuel by Kautzsch. Readers 
of Driver's Introduction will recall the things there 
said going to show that our books of Samuel, like the 
Pentateuch, are composite. In Kautzsch's commentary 
these documents are separated and dated. And it is 
found that there are nine different authors (or editors) 
of our Samuel. There are accounts of the life of 
David coming from the days of Solomon and Reho- 
boam. There is an account of Samuel and Saul coming 
from the time of Hosea. There are later additions to 
the traditions made after the publication of Deuteron- 
omy (622 b.c). Professor Cheyne appends a consider- 
able list of parallel passages showing which tradition is 
to be considered the more accurate. The two versions 
upon the slayer of Goliath 1 are treated at considerable 

1 I Sam. xvii. 1; xviii. 4; and 2 Sam. xxi. 19. 



300 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

length in the discourse on David and Goliath. It is not 
only asserted that Elhanan, and not David, slew Goliath, 
but it is made apparent why no other interpretation can 
be possible. Note the omission of " brother " in 2 Sam. 
xxi. 19, borrowed in the English from 1 Chron. xx. 5 ; 
consider also the date and historical fictions of Chron- 
icles as set forth by Driver. Professor Cheyne frankly 
admits that the story we have loved from our youth is 
not true. He then proceeds to treat it as a story, writ- 
ten, as all good stories are, for a noble purpose, and 
preaches from it as any preacher might do. 

There are two discourses on the " Character of 
David," which are the most careful and trustworthy 
estimate of Israel's great poet and king of any with 
which I am acquainted. It is easy to make too much 
of David. It is perhaps easier to underestimate him. 
Indeed, the orthodox church has never been able to 
answer the charges of the sceptic with any degree of 
satisfaction. As our knowledge of ethics and psychol- 
ogy have increased, it has become more and more 
apparent that ethically and mentally the David of Sam- 
uel could not be the author of the Psalms. Either the 
David of Samuel is made unreal by supposing that he 
wrote the Hebrew Hymn Book, or the David of the 
Psalms is made a monster by supposing him to be the 
King protrayed in Samuel. The " Aids " is a strong 
and conclusive answer to a certain kind of religious 
infidelity that is all too common, even among those who 
by their appreciation of good literature and " good liv- 
ing" show that they are, after all, far from being 
irreligious. 

The chapter on the inspiration of the Psalms I 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 301 

regard especially suited to the needs of our own time. 
We cannot reject the inspiration of the Scriptures, if, by 
so doing, we are driven to affirm that God accomplished 
nothing, and taught the world no consistent moral and 
spiritual lesson by the Hebrew people and literature. 
We must not reject the doctrine of inspiration, if, along 
with it, we must discard the thought of God in history. 
On the other hand, if inspiration means the annihilation 
of free-will and moral responsibility for the time being, 
if it means the coming to a man of truth that is wholly 
(or in part) outside of his human powers of comprehen- 
sion, we, in so far as we are in touch with modern 
science, must part company with such doctrines of 
inspiration. Canon Cheyne in many places uses lan- 
guage that I could not use as expressive of my own opin- 
ions. But, on the whole, I am in full sympathy with 
the trend of his remarks. Especially is it fitting to 
say that the Psalms are the hymns of the Jewish 
Church. - It is not the individual that speaks through 
them. The authors are unknown. The gifts and 
functions which formerly belonged to the priests and 
prophets are here transferred to the whole Jewish peo- 
ple. We have the Psalms to-day because the Church 
of the Jews was an inspired Church. Cheyne under- 
stands inspiration in no narrow sense. He does not 
limit the true divine afflatus to the Biblical writers. 
He believes that Dante and Browning are, in a very 
real sense, inspired. " There are not indeed two inspi- 
rations, for there is but one Holy Spirit. But there 
are many degrees and varieties of inspiration." 

3. Several of the more important Psalms are ex- 
pounded in the light of the broad, free criticism out- 



302 LEISUREL Y RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

lined above, and any spiritually minded man can see 
that the Scriptures have gained wonderfully in homi- 
letical suggestion by being so treated. It wounds our 
religious feeling when we are told for the first time that 
Psalm ex. is not Davidic and not Messianic, but "joy 
comes in the morning" when we arise to the thought 
that " God is in his heaven/' though our conception of 
his method of self -revelation was erroneous and unwor- 
thy of his character. 

XI. PROFESSOR DRIVER AS A PREACHER. 

The quotation given below was copied by one of the 
Boston dailies from the Presbyterian. It is too ex- 
treme to merit a serious reply, and would not be given 
here but for the fact that some people seem foreor- 
dained to continue to hold these views for some time to 
come. The passage in question which comes from the 
church of Professor Briggs (!) is as follows : — 

" The higher critics are net troubled with modesty. They do 
not hesitate to make the most positive assertions. They think that 
they know all about how the Pentateuch was composed, and who 
did and who did not write the books of the Bible, and when they 
were written. They cannot bear to have their positions ' ques- 
tioned.' Men who hold on to what they call traditionalism are 
treated as fools, and behind the age, and no scholars. They, as 
the learned of the age, have said ' the last word,' and their infal- 
libility must not be gainsaid. They denounce the dogmaticians, 
yet are the most dogmatic of modern teachers. They have their 
own misgivings about the infallibility of the Scriptures, but none 
about their own processes. A little more humility upon their part 
would not be out of place. Pride bringeth a snare, and the great 
Babylon which they have built is liable to fall at any moment, and 
cover them with confusion and shame. Resting largely upon con- 
jecture, it lacks an enduring foundation. 11 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 303 

Not a statement in the whole paragraph is true. 
The author shows that he does not know the A B C of 
what the higher criticism is. Higher criticism is that 
study of the books of the Bible which aims to find out 
their date, authorship, and meaning. Professor James 
Robertson is a higher critic, and is just out with an 
elaborate defence of the Mosaic authorship of the Pen- 
tateuch. Does he think he has said the last word ? 
Not by any means. He is in many ways a most fair 
and careful man. The late Professor Elmslie was a 
higher critic, yet he wrote some of the most beautiful, 
spiritual, and inspiring essays on the Minor Prophets I 
ever read. But, poor man, it now appears that he 
thought he knew it all, when in reality he was believing 
a lie. To be sure he was a conservative, a good ortho- 
dox Congregationalist, I believe, but being a higher 
critic, he must be classed with the rest of us as proud, 
arrogant, self-assuming, dictatorial, and unchristian. 
Away with' all this sort of talk ! To correct such 
errors puts one out of sorts. I had it in mind to say of 
the writer of the quoted paragraph a thing which I will 
not say, though I will write it down here, that the 
reader may know what my inner thoughts are. Some 
people seem to me to purposely refrain from reading any 
books on the subjects about which they write, in order 
that they may tell the most flagrant untruths without 
wounding (?) their consciences. 

2. How different in tone from the unspiritual, contro- 
versial, dogmatic temper of the above discussion, both 
sides, are " Sermons on the Old Testament," by S. R. 
Driver. We have here twelve sermons and an essay. 
And "the volume may be regarded," as the author says, 



304 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

" as supplementary to my ' Introduction to the Litera- 
ture of the Old Testament/ " The sermons are on a 
variety of subjects, and all illustrate how true is the 
word of Driver and his school, which says that the 
Bible loses nothing of its moral and spiritual power at 
their hands. The first sermon is a study of the oldest 
creation story found in the second chapter of Genesis. 
Canon Driver shows how absolutely impossible, and 
how perfectly puerile, it is to attempt to reconcile this 
account with modern science. The author of the Bib- 
lical story did not aim to teach science. His forte was 
religion. Furthermore, Professor Driver sees in Gen. 
ii. nothing inconsistent with the positions of theistic 
evolution. Their differences are due to their different 
ages. He believes that Gen. ii. is inspired. He also 
believes that the evolutionist is right in his views of 
origins. To make Gen. ii. teach evolution would be 
impossible, but to fail to see the beauties of the one, or 
the truths of the other, because of an apparent inconsis- 
tency, would be to miss the purpose of both. 

The eighth sermon is a study of the first chapter of 
Genesis. Here, again, the author protests against the 
efforts of those scholars who try to reconcile this 
account with the teachings of geology. The story 
contradicts geology at several points, and geology is 
doubtless right. A forced reconciliation cannot help 
the cause of truth. There is too much of this sort of 
thing done already. It has led scores of otherwise 
truthful men into habits of equivocation. Why not 
frankly admit the facts ? And then what ? Is the rec- 
ord worthless ? Not at all. When we compare it with 
the cosmogonies of its time it is a marvel of correct- 



WITH SOME OF ITS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS. 305 

ness, of insight. Its theism is still the admiration of 
the world. It is when a chapter in the Old Testament 
is compared with its own time and not with our time, 
that its divinity and its inspiration appear. Because 
we have outgrown a chapter or a command is no proof 
that that word was never a command of God, direct 
and explicit. 

3. Another proof of the divinity of the Bible is the 
fact that right in the midst of these teachings, that- 
were for a particular time and place, are others that are 
for all time and for every place. Canon Driver has not 
passed over these. He believes that the Psalms have 
an enduring value for religious devotion. He believes 
that the prophets have set the example of the moral and 
religious reformer, which will continue while the world 
stands. He believes that the Jews, beginning with the 
later books of the Old Testament, and working on till 
the beginnings of the New Testament, have given the 
world the best basis for its faith in the immortality of 
the soul. To mention, the titles of the last two ser- 
mons is to indicate two more instances where the 
teachings of the Old Testament are to endure forever. 
They are "The Lord our Righteousness, ,, and "Mercy 
and not Sacrifice." 

These sermons are an able attempt in the right di- 
rection. If the sermons of the world were founded 
upon a more careful, a more honest, and a more fair 
interpretation of the Bible, there would be more spirit- 
uality in the pulpit, and more morality in the pews. 
Such sermons, too, would go far towards effectually 
demonstrating that when it comes to the actual uses, 
religious, moral, and educational, of the sacred Scrip- 



306 LEISURELY RAMBLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 

tures, there is not that breach between the older scholar- 
ship and the new which some have been pleased to 
emphasize. 

It would be impossible to mention in a single chapter 
all the good books which help to establish this thesis ; 
indeed, some books that most deserve a place here have 
appeared since these "rambles" were written ; but it is 
hoped that enough has been said to show that the work 
•of the new school of criticism is based upon facts, and 
that it aims not to destroy faith, but to rescue a faith 
that was fast passing away of its own accord, because 
its growth was hampered and its life smothered. Lei- 
surely rambles through Old Testament subjects with 
such works as have been named in this chapter, or 
with such books as W. R. Smith's "Prophets of Israel," 
G. A. Smith's " Book of Isaiah," R, A. Watson's "Book 
of Job," or R. F. Horton's " Proverbs " cannot fail to in- 
spire and uplift. If I mistake not the reader who loves 
his conservatism may rise from the reading of such 
books as these with the comment, that this new gos- 
pel is, after all, only the old gospel permeated through 
and through with a love that casts out fear. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



HINTS FOR THE PULPIT AND DEVOTIONAL USE 
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 



u Much of the attraction is due, of course, to the variety and picturesqueness 
of the Old Testament, to its lyric elements, to the gallant and heroic in it, and 
to the warm patriotism in which its religion is so often incarnate. But apart 
from these, the modern mind is especially drawn to the Old Testament, by its 
portraiture of character, its ideals of social righteousness, its vision of history as 
the tribunal of God, its treatment of speculative questions, and its treatment of 
the prudential aspects of life — neither of which last two is treated by the New 
Testament in detail. Above all, it is the Old Testaments inimitable portraiture 
of character upon which our great preachers have combined." 

Prof. G. A. Smith. 

" The Bible was written so long ago that its taste is not that of our refined 
age. It abou?ids in bad language and bad utterances. There should be a holy 
book made out of its pages — a book not only for children but for all of us. What 
a glorious book might be made out of that vast mass of wisdom and beauty ! " 

David Swing. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

HINTS FOR THE PULPIT AND DEVOTIONAL USE OF THE 
OLD TESTAMENT. 

I. It has been said that Schleiermacher alone, of the 
great preachers, ignored the Old Testament, and it has 
further been said that his involved and inornate style 
is partly due to this neglect. Certainly any study of 
the great preachers of the world should begin, not with 
Chrysostom or Peter the Hermit, but with the great 
preachers of the Old Testament, Samuel and Elijah, 
Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Prof. G. A. 
Smith has published a very interesting list of great 
preachers who were helped to greatness by the great 
preachers of the Old Testament, and thus helped be- 
cause " the foundation of Old Testament preaching is 
the passion to win men." 1 They were in dead earnest, 
to them the vital questions of religion and morals were 
life and death questions. For truth they would sac- 
rifice anything, even their very lives. And to the 
preacher who will take the trouble to understand the 
Biblical prophets all this is contagious. It proved its 
power to uplift and inspire to Chrysostom and Savona- 
rola, to Kingsley, Maurice and Robertson. The Old 
Testament is the book of liberty. It teaches and in- 
spires freedom alike in church and state. As Professor 
Smith truly says, the prophets of the Old Testament 

1 Prof. G. A. Smith's Inaugural Address, p. 44. 
309 



3IO HINTS FOR THE PULPIT AND DEVOTIONAL USE 

were citizens and patriots, the apostles of the New were 
sojourners and pilgrims. It is to be expected, then, 
that New Testament scholars will warn Old Testament 
scholars not to move ahead too fast for them. 1 And 
meanwhile let all alike take encouragement from the 
fact that the so-called destructive parts of criticism but 
remove difficulties " which have always been an embar- 
rassment to conscientious preachers." When they 
remove more than this the Christian conscience will 
cry out with a voice that will be heard and obeyed. 
On the other hand, when the Church reaches the point 
where it can put faith in the Christian critics that it 
has itself produced, then we may hope to see the Old 
Testament taking the place which it deserves in our 
pulpit and devotional readings. 

2. One of the boons needed to bring this about is an 
expurgated Bible, to use a somewhat harsh and unsuit- 
able term. There has long been a silent, or but % half 
expressed, longing for just such a Bible. But the rea- 
son this longing has not been more pronounced and 
importunate has been the fact that people have been 
taught that the Bible is a unit, all equally inspired and 
equally valuable. It is because this old way of stating 
our belief in the Bible is fast becoming a thing of the 
past, that the expurgated Bible is not only a possibility, 
but (may we not hope ?) an assured fact. 2 

For the general reader some such Scriptures as these 
should be in great demand. It is worse than useless 

1 W. Sanday's Two Present-Day Questions, p. 31, passim. 

2 Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, published by the Putnams, are 
not quite free from a traditionalism that enslaves the thought of the 
original. 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 311 

for the ordinary Christian to read the Bible through by 
rote. There are whole sections that are nothing but gen- 
ealogical tables, without a scrap of incident to enliven 
their dry bones. There are arguments in the prophets 
which are good in themselves, but are illustrated by 
incidents which are, to our age, indelicate and vulgar. 
There are examples of cruelty and deep-seated revenge 
in the Old Testament that were never read in the Jew- 
ish synagogues, and, so far as I know, are never read 
to-day in public or private worship. There are long 
sections in the prophets which are nothing but notes 
for oral discourses. The student caix sometimes fill 
out these notes, but to the uninitiated they are but a 
meaningless jumble. In the New Testament there is 
less that is open to criticism of this character, but 
even here a careful selection will add to the value 
of the book rather than take from it. There are 
portions of the New Testament that are as dry and 
recondite as an eighteenth century theologian. For 
devotional purposes they are valueless. The argument 
follows laws of thought and laws of association that 
are no longer intelligible or forcible. In passages of 
this sort the " Expositor's Bible " is more wholesome 
reading for the ordinary student than the Bible itself. 
I have had occasion to peep into quite a number of pul- 
pit Bibles during the last few years, and I find, if the 
lead pencil marks tell what they seem to, that my 
brother ministers are in the habit of omitting these 
"hard sayings " in their public readings. 

This sort of thing ought to be done. It ought to be 
done oftener than it is. For we have our Christian 
doctrine in earthen vessels whose form perishes. The 



312 HINTS FOR THE PULPIT AND DEVOTIONAL USE 

Greek and Hebrew languages are dead. Even the 
languages into which the Scriptures were first trans- 
lated are dead, the Aramaic, Syriac, and Latin. The 
letter perishes, but the spirit is eternal. We ought to 
be more free and frank in recognizing this. To bind 
one's self to a translation and to the original author's own 
method and manner of statement is to serve the letter 
rather than the spirit. A glance at Driver's Introduc- 
tion, or at the historical references in the books them- 
selves, will at once convince the reader that he might 
about as well attempt to read the dictionary through 
by rote as a book like our Isaiah or Jeremiah. 

3. In the beginning the dignitaries assembled and 
discussed the Scriptures in existence with a view to the 
formation of the canon. They were not agreed as to 
which books were inspired and which were not. There 
was often hot, even acrimonious, debate. At last it was 
decided by vote that such and such books should be 
Bible, and other such should not be Bible. By that vote 
the Church declared what books would be helpful to it, 
and what books would not be so helpful. If the Church 
is a living Church, apparently it has a just right at any 
time to take a vote on this question. Our age has a 
right — indeed, it is our duty — to declare what parts of 
the Bible moralize us and spiritualize us, and what parts 
do not. We do not deny the inspiration of the omitted 
portions by rejecting them from our present day Bible. 
We merely declare that Christianity has been a success, 
and those commands have been left behind. Christian- 
ity is a success, not to the extent that it keeps the 
Bible before it, but to the exact extent that it puts the 
Bible behind it. It is not the Bible but the ideal of 



OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 313 

life described in the Bible, to make a somewhat arbi- 
trary distinction, which we should keep before us as 
our aim and goal. And to do this we must put in 
order those parts that bear a message to our age. In 
the readings suggested below, an effort has been made 
to do this, and it is hoped that thus the more unfamil- 
iar parts of the Old Testament will be made to speak 
in a well-known tongue. 

4. The readings suggested are based, so far as prac- 
ticable, upon the results of the best critical scholarship. 
The list is suggestive rather than complete, and no ef- 
fort has been made to include the great chapters of the 
Old Testament which are already often read in public 
and private. 

Amos, i. 3 -ii. 5 ; v. 4-8. 

Amos, i. 2; iii. 1-8; v. 11, 12, 14, 18-24, 15. 

Amos, vi. 1 ; viii. 4-8 ; ix. 7-9, 11-15. 

Hosea, iv. 1-9 ; vi. 1-7 ; xiv. 4-8 a ; xi. 1, 3, 4, 8, 9. 

Isaiah, vi. 1-13; i. 2-20, 25-27. 

Isaiah, v. 8-24; iv. 3-6 (a song of woes). 

Isaiah, vii. 1-25. 

Isaiah, v. 25; ix. 8-x. 4; v. 26-30 (omitting ix. 15, a beauti- 
ful poem) . 

Micah, i. 2-5 a ; ii. i-4 a , 11 ; iii. 4-7, 9-12; iv. 1-4. 

2 Micah, vi. 1 ; vii. 1-6; vi. 2-8; vii. 18-20. 

Nahum, i. 1 ; ii. 1-6; iii. 1-3; i. 2-7, 15. 

Zephaniah, i. 2,3, 12-18; iii. 1-5, 8-10, 13-17, 20 (omitting 
" when I bring" to end). 

Jeremiah, xx. 7-11, 14, 15, 18. (the prophefs lament because 
his predictions have not come true) ; xviii. 1-12 (the reason 
why his words of woe were not fulfilled, see also the reading 
on Jonah) . 



314 HINTS FOR THE PULPIT 

Jeremiah, xxxi. 1-7, 10-14, 28—35 ( a beautiful passage with 

a promise of the new covenant). 
2 Isaiah, xlii. 1-4 ; 1. 4-9 ; lxix. 1-6 (the suffering servant of 

Jahveh). 
Joel, ii. 1-14, 28-32; iii. 17-21 (omitting vs. 19). 
Jonah, i. 1-8, 11-15, i7 a ; iii. 1-5, 10; iv. 1-11, (omitting 5 b , 

if he made a booth, why the gourd in vs. 6 ? This reading 

is short, yet it includes the whole story and lesson of the 

book). 

One measurably familiar with the Bible, and with a 
good commentary in hand, could easily follow out the 
suggestions given above, and compile a connected and 
helpful reading from the Bible on almost any desired 
subject. The plan is certainly worthy of a fair trial, 
if by it our pulpit lessons may be rendered more intel- 
ligible to the masses, and more moral and spiritual as 
helps to divine worship. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



AN INEXPENSIVE OLD TESTAMENT LIBRARY. 



" The deep book, no matter how remote the subject, helps us best? 1 

Emerson. 

" Reade not to co?ttradict, and confute ; 
Nor to believe and take for granted ; 
Nor to find talk and discourse ; 
But to weigh and cpnsider." 

Bacon. 

" Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in 
them, to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do pre- 
serve, as in a violl, the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that 
bred them. . . , As good almost kill a man, as kill a good booke ; who kills 
a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; but he who destroys a good 
booke, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye? 1 

Milton. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

AN INEXPENSIVE OLD TESTAMENT LIBRARY. 

I. Of commentaries there are many things to be said. 
If one already has correct principles of Biblical inter- 
pretation, any commentary is better than none. On 
the other hand, if a man has not some key to the Bible 
and its true purpose, a poor commentary is worse than 
none at all. In any case a good one is better than a 
poor one. The Bible has been greatly and deeply 
injured by interpreters who have worked in a slip-shod 
and uncritical manner. This is true, not only of com- 
mentators, but of preachers. Many good sermons are 
founded upon a false interpretation of an important 
Scripture text. Such blunders as this occur alarm- 
ingly often, and there is little or no excuse for them. 
Good books on Biblical subjects are many and cheap. 
Furthermore, the Bible can be made an authority for 
everything that is good, by taking texts in their real 
meaning, by using them without addition or subtrac- 
tion, without exaggeration or equivocation. If the 
Church, or any branch of the Church, uses a text in any 
other than its true meaning, the world will some day 
find it out to our shame. It is especially necessary 
that the " progressive " minister be fair and up to date 
in his exegesis, for the eyes of all are upon him, and, 
secondly, the evidences of the general truthfulness of 
his positions are multiplying so rapidly that he does 

3 J 7 



318 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT 

not need to add to, or take from. He can be fair, he 
can insist upon our adopting the natural meaning of 
texts, and be sure that the truths that he loves will tri- 
umph at last. 

The Bible has been injured by preachers who have 
misinterpreted it ; it has been injured by commenta- 
tors, who have purposely and confessedly ignored 
important facts bearing upon the interpretation of 
books and parts of books. I have before me a com- 
mentary in two volumes on Exodus, in which the 
author professes to ignore everything bearing upon the 
history and the archaeology of the period. And, of 
course, a man who ignores testimony from these sources 
may formulate any conceivable theory as to the date 
and authorship of the book. He may, if he ignore his- 
tory, defend the most plenary form of inspiration with- 
out in the least being conscious that he is defending a 
lie. Suppose one wrote thus of Daniel, how easy it 
would be to defend this book as historical. But to one 
who has a smattering of Babylonian history, there are 
things to be considered that will at least carry us as far 
as to doubt whether the book is to be accepted as his- 
tory, to doubt whether it is worth while for a Christian 
to spend the time to defend its' miracles. The book of 
Daniel mentions a Babylonian captivity in the third 
year of Jehoiachim. History knows nothing of this. 
Yet we have a full record of Nebuchadnezzar's cam- 
paigns. Daniel mentions a long period of insanity that 
overtook Nebuchadnezzar. Yet, strangely enough, royal 
records bearing his name and containing rational words 
have come down to us from every year of his reign. 1 

1 Driver (Introduction) thinks, however, that the Book of Daniel may, 
after all, be right on this point. 



AN INEXPENSIVE OLD TESTAMENT LIBRARY. 319 

Lastly, we know all the Babylonian kings, and there is 
no Belshazzar among them. These and other discrep- 
ancies are altogether too patent to be ignored. An- 
other thing to be considered is the fact that the Book 
of Daniel gives us an accurate history of a period four 
hundred years subsequent to the reputed age of Daniel. 
Similar things may be said of many Old Testament 
books. They are not always things that would lead us 
to change our minds as to the moral and religious value 
of them ; but they are things that we need to know, if 
we would have an intelligent idea of what a book really 
was intended to teach. 

It would seem, therefore, that every minister should 
have in his library a trustworthy set of Bible commen- 
taries. There is too little recognition of the impor- 
tance of this. The clergymen of the age, and especially 
the more progressive ones, are too prone to neglect this 
class of literature, and go elsewhere for sermon mate- 
rial. I fear this is a mistake. Some of the very best 
ministers have, as a consequence, fallen into a slov- 
enly exegesis. It is not because they are adverse 
to the better views, but because the subject is dis- 
tasteful. They have simply neglected to keep them- 
selves informed. 

2. The list of Old Testament commentaries that is 
added below is not by any means complete. Neither, 
perhaps, have I always chosen the best to be had ; yet 
so far as I know them, they are good, and some of them, 
I am sure, are the best. Some Old Testament books 
are as yet without an English commentary that can be 
recommended. 



320 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Genesis. Delitzsch, new, 2 vols., good. 
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. M. M. Kalisch, good 
and expensive. 

Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Keil, fair. 

Samuel. Kirkpatrick, in Cambridge Bible for Schools, fair. 

Ezra, Nehemiah. Ryle, Cam. Bible, excellent. 

Job. Davidson, Cam. Bible, excellent. 

Job. Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, excellent. 

Psalms. Cheyne, excellent. 

Psalms. Delitzsch, new, good. 

Proverbs. Delitzsch, fair. 

Ecclesiastes. Plumptre, Cam. Bible, excellent. 

Isaiah. Cheyne, excellent. 

Isaiah. Delitzsch, new, good. 

Jeremiah. Orelli, good. 

Jeremiah. Stearne, Cam. Bible, fair. 

Ezekiel. Davidson, Cam. Bible, excellent. 

Daniel. A. A. Bevan, excellent. 

Hosea. Cheyne, Cam. Bible, fair. 

Micah. Cheyne, Cam. Bible, fair. 

Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. Perowne, Cam. Bible, fair. 

Other numbers of the Cambridge Bible that will be 
excellent are Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy by 
Ginsburg, and Isaiah by Robertson Smith. As to the 
books omitted from this list it will be best, perhaps, on 
the whole, to wait for something better than has yet 
appeared, nor is it probable that we shall have long to 
wait. By no means buy sets of commentaries straight. 
There are volumes in the Cambridge Bible and in 
Ellicott that are not worth the paper they are written 
on. 

3. While it is the office of the commentary to give 
an introduction to each book treated, it is certainly 
worth while to own for reference, if not for study, a 
book like Driver's Introduction, and this should be 



AN INEXPENSIVE OLD TESTAMENT LIBRAR V. 3 2 1 

supplemented with a copy of Professor Ryle's book on 
the Canon. 

4. Books that systematize the teachings of the Old 
Testament are very helpful. Much of the Old Testa- 
ment theology is practical theology, or it is everyday 
religion. Books that no minister's library should be 
without are Hermann Schultz's two volumes on this 
subject. They are a rich mine of learning and spirit- 
ual insight. Less expensive and equally scholarly and 
reverent is Piepenbring's " Old Testament Theology/' 
translated into very readable English by Professor 
Mitchell of Boston University. 

5. Old Testament histories are legion. Renan's is 
delightful, somewhat out of date in its critical views, 
and abominably translated. Graetz's first volume is 
somewhat better. Wellhausen's is, on the whole, the 
best, while, of the older histories, Stanley's is by no 
means as yet supplanted. 

6. For the busy minister and the general reader, 
books like the " Expositor's Bible," and the "Men of 
the Bible" series are especially to be recommended. 
These books bring the Old Testament writers right 
down to our own age. The biographical element in 
them gives them life and inspiration. But both these 
series have poor volumes in them. G. A. Smith's 
Isaiah and Cheyne's Jeremiah are samples of the better 
numbers. 

7. By no means should one avoid the latest books. 
Yet one should be very careful about reading on Old 
Testament subjects anything that comes to hand. Do 
not read a book that a friend has recommended unless 
you know why his opinion should be respected. Many 



322 BACK TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

men, whose intents and desires are right, are full of 
most untenable ideas, because they have been led astray 
by men who have thought more of defending a tradition 
or an hypothesis than of speaking the truth. Much of 
what is being said about the confirmations from the 
monuments is utterly baseless. Professor Cheyne is 
certainly right in laying serious charges at the doors of 
such writers as A. H. Sayce. They draw perfectly 
absurd conclusions from the facts. The great Assyriol- 
ogistsare on the side of the modern school. Let those 
who desire guidance in this direction, read Schrader's 
" Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament/' or 
the new series of the " Records of the Past." These 
are far better than the conclusions drawn from the 
inscriptions that are going the rounds of the religious 
press. 

It is certainly true that the Church should move 
slowly and with caution in these matters. But to the 
truly religious man, to the man of faith, there is little 
to cause alarm in these newer books. If ours is an age 
of unbelief, it is this unbelief that has caused destruc- 
tive Biblical criticism; the higher criticism has not 
caused it. For the modern movement in Bible study is 
at bottom sincere, profoundly in earnest, profoundly 
moral, and filled with an intense desire to reach the 
very heart of our modern life. It is an effort, not to 
take the gospel away from the people, but to bring it 
to them in all its primitive purity and power. 



INDEX. 



Acts of the Apostles, 174. 

Amos, 100, 130. 

Apocrypha of the Old Testament, 

117. 
Atonement: views of the prophets, 

133, 147; of the priests, 136; 

of Paul, 144, 147; of 2 Isaiah, 

153; vicarious, 165; day of, 

141. 
Azazel, 141. 

Baruch, Book of, 107. 

Bible, greatness of, 47; need of an 

expurgated edition of, 310. 
Biblical study, 18; obstacles to, 42; 

revival of, 29; common method 

reversed, 26. 
Biographical sermons, 280. 

Caird, E., 245. 

Caird, J., 233. 

Canon of the Old Testament, 251 
fol. 

Carlyle, 159. 

Commerce, 210. 

Cheyne, Canon, 278, 298. 

Christ as Messiah, 121; as a sacri- 
fice, 149; as suffering for the 
world, 175, 179. 

Chronicles, Book of, 204, 300. 

Creation, 52, 277. 

Criticism, see Higher Criticism. 



Daniel, Book of, 106, 204, 318. 
Deborah's Song, 87. 
Deuteronomy, Book of, 129, 144, 

158, 255, 273. 
Diognetus, epistle to, 149. 
Driver, Canon, 58, 271, 278, 302. 

ECCLESIASTES, BOOK OF, 56, 1 34. 

Ecclesiasticus, see Sirach. 
Education, 211. 
Elmslie, Prof., 288. 
Enoch, Book of, in. 
Evolution of Religion, 233 fol. 
Exodus, Book of, 128, 155, 255. 
Expurgated Bible, 310. 
Ezekiel, Book of, 55, 64, 103, 136, 

255> 276. 
Ezra-Nehemiah, Book of, 204. 

Faith, 15, 133. 

Fallibility of the Bible, 61, 67. 

Family, 208. 

Farrar, Canon, 278. 

Freedom, 92. 

Galatians, Epistle to, 143, 145. 
Genesis, Book of, 112, 128, 156, 

3<H. 

Genung, Prof., 280 fol. 

Gideon, 277. 

God, history of the idea of, 79, 93. 

Gospel, same in the two Testa- 
ments, 188. 



3 2 3 



3^4 



INDEX. 



Government, 209. 
Gnostics, 222. 
Green, T. H., 234. 

Habakkuk, Book of, 134. 
Haeckel, view of Old Testament, 

227. 
Haggai, Book of, 105, 136. 
Happiness, 158. 
Hebrew language, 269. 
Hegel, view of Old Testament, 224. 
Higher criticism, 258 fol., 276, 298, 

302. 
Higher critics, 16, 31. 
Hosea, Book of, 90, 101, 132. 

Immanence of God, 74, 75. 

Individualism, 55. 

Inspiration, 58, 68, 301; in New 
Testament, 66; verbal, concep- 
tual, plenary, 72. 

Inspirationism, 54. 

Isaiah, Book of First; 63, 93, 101, 
131, 274. 

Isaiah, Book of Second, 104, 153 
fol., 162, 173, 181. 

Israel, limitations of, 38. 

Jeremiah, Book of, 55, 102, 132, 

194, 276. 
Jesus, the Christ, 104; view of Old 

Testament, 219. 
Jews, orthodox, 217; reformed, 

218. 
Job, Book of, 56, 134, 280 fol. 
Joel, Book of, 106, 136. 
John, Gospel of, 179. 
Josephus, Flavius, 168. 
Joshua, Book of, 154. 
Judges, Book of, 204, 272. 
Justin Martyr, 168. 



Kant, Immanuel, view of Old 

Testament, 223. 
Kings, Book of, 154, 204. 
Kuenen, Abraham, 8^ fol. 

Labor, dignity of, 210. 

Land, ownership of, 209. 

Law, Mosaic, abrogated, 146; spirit 
ualized, 164. 

Leviticus, Book of, 136, 138, 255. 

Lotze, Hermann, view of Old Testa- 
ment, 225. 

Maccabees, Book of, 107. 

Malachi, Book of, 105, 115. 

Man, influence of the great, 295. 

Marcion, view of Old Testament, 
222. 

Mark, Gospel of, 115, 174, 176. 

Matthew, Gospel of, 177, 219. 

Messiah, as king, 101, no; as 
priest, 108; as prophet, 109; 
as Christ, 121 ; spiritual leader- 
ship of, 117. 

Messianism, general nature of, 99, 

113. 
Micah, Book of, 93, 102, 132. 
Miracles, 262, 263; Kant on, 290. 
Monotheism, 89. 
Moses, work of, 82 fol. 

Nehemiah-Ezra, Book of, 204. 
Newton, Rev. R. Heber, 261. 
Numbers, Book of, 254. 

Old Testament, permanent ele- 
ments in, 28, 46; chronology 
of, 204; defence of, 30, 297; 
popularized, 298; commen- 
taries, 319; introductions, 320; 
histories, 321; theologies, 321. 



INDEX. 



325 



Paul, Doctrine of atonement, 
144 fol.; view of Old Testa- 
ment, 220. 

Peter, first epistle of, 180. 

Pentateuch, parts of, dated, 204. 

Pfleiderer, Dr. O., 80. 

Philo, Judaeus, 168. 

Plenary Inspiration, 72. 

Poor and ricrr^2io. 

Preaching, biographical, 280; ex- 
pository, 279. 

Protevangelium, 112. 

Pulpit readings, 313. 

Psalms, Book of, in, 135, 171. 

Psalms of Solomon, apocryphal book 
of, no. 

Religion, Hebrew, 37, 41. 
Religions, classification of, 223. 
Renan, Ernest, 286 fol. 
Revelation, 32. 
Rich and poor, 210. 
Ryle, Prof. H. E., 251 fol. 

Sacrifice, early ideas of, 125; 
as a feast, 127; as a gift, 128; 
as a ransom, 129; view of, in 
the prophets, 130; in the wis- 
dom literature, 134; in the 
Psalms, 135; human sacrifice, 

154. 
Samuel, Books of, 130, 204, 254, 
300. 



Schelling, view of Old Testament, 

225. 
Scribal exegesis, in. 
Servant of Jahveh, 160; as a guilt 

offering, 162; as a prophet, 

162; mission of, 167; in the 

New Testament, 173. 
Sibylline oracles, 109. 
Sin of ignorance, 139. 
Sirach, Book of, or Ecclesiasticus, 

109, 256. 
Smith, W. Robertson, 243, 266. 
Social view of atonement, 153 fol. 
Socialism, primitive, 54. 
Sociology and theology, 199, 207, 

294. 
Solomon, 277. 
Suffering righteous, 156, 168. 

Targums, 112, 183. 

Text, Hebrew, of Old Testament, 

267. 
Toy, Prof. C. H., 264 fol., 292 fol. 

Verbal Inspiration, 72. 
Views of Old Testament, ancient 
and modern, 219 fol. 

Wars of Jahveh, Book of, 254. 
Wellhausen, 84 fol. 

Zechariah, Book of, 104, 108, 
136. 



